


Dead Reckoning

by veilchenjaeger



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Co-General Shenanigans, F/M, First Kiss, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Getting Together, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Mutual Pining, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Pre-Polyamoury, ambiguous references to background Zorii/Jannah, frankly ridiculous amounts of kissing, very minor side character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 57,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24578278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veilchenjaeger/pseuds/veilchenjaeger
Summary: The war is over, but it doesn't really feel like it yet. In the wake of the Battle of Exegol, Poe grapples with his own burn-out, his feelings for Finn, Finn's feelings for Rey, and leading a Resistance through the aftermath of victory. All of that is a lot more difficult than it should be, especially since Rey refuses to talk to anyone.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Zorii Bliss & Poe Dameron
Comments: 35
Kudos: 76





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [traveling_ink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/traveling_ink/gifts).



> Do John Boyega a solid and donate to BLM. Then put on a donation video in the background while you read this.
> 
> This was written directly after TROS came out and tries to deal with all the canon details, even those I personally hate. I'm not a Star Wars expert by any means, despite the hours I spent on Wookieepedia while writing this, so this doubtlessly ignores canon established in novels etc. and might contain some errors when it comes to lore. I apologise; I don't usually go here. 
> 
> Two small disclaimers: I know that what Finn was going to tell Rey on Pasaana likely wasn't a love confession - but it's fun to imagine it was, so I'm rolling with it. The Reylo kiss is brought up, but it's read as non-romantic - just a head-up for everyone who'd be bothered by that. May the Force be with you.
> 
> Big thanks to [fanpersoningfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanpersoningfox/pseuds/fanpersoningfox) for the beta - I'm sorry I left in all those commas you wanted me to delete. It pained me too much to see them go.

The celebrations drag on for hours. Poe hugs everyone he’s ever met who’s made it out of this mess alive, and then a bunch of people he’s never seen before. The stream of people he’s hugging never seems to end. There are new ones joining them virtually every second, people from all over the galaxy, who are here to see their friends and family, to meet the higher-ups of the Resistance, or just to have a good story to tell once their grandchildren ask what they were doing on the day the First Order fell.

By the time the celebration has become a full-on party and someone’s somehow organised a band to play old cantina hits in one corner of the cleared-out hangar cave, Poe is high enough on euphoria and deep enough into the Ardees to stop caring about the identity of the people he hugs.

He’s lost more close friends today than he’s lost since Crait. He lost one of the last people he could call family barely a day ago, and he doesn’t have the Force connection Rey has that makes her so eerily at peace with Leia’s passing. But Rey is alright. Finn is alright. BB-8, Chewie, Threepio, Artoo, Rose, Lando – even Zorii, they’re all alright, somehow. They won the war. And Poe’s been over this kind of celebration often enough to know that that’s all that matters, now. The mourning comes later.

Eventually – likely in the middle of the night, but time has no meaning when you went halfway across the galaxy just this afternoon – Poe finds himself sitting at a makeshift table in the cave, one arm around Finn, who in turn has one around Rey. She had healed Poe’s arm right after they had returned to Ajan Kloss, and her terrifying new Force powers might freak him out a little, but he’s grateful for them now that he’s in dire need of all his limbs to initiate physical contact. He’s still slightly boozed up, but he’s stopped drinking an hour ago, so the alcohol-induced dizziness is slowly subsiding.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t still dizzy and smiling like an idiot. Victory does that to you.

He throws little bits of anecdotes at Finn, and Finn finishes them seamlessly. He’s beaming like a blue giant, like he could illuminate a whole solar system and then some. Victory has him drunk on ecstasy. Poe imagines what it must be like, to only ever have known the First Order, not as a distant threat but up close, and now finally being free of it for good.

He tightens his grip around Finn’s shoulder and sways him to the rhythm of the music, and makes him tell the rest of the story of how they retrieved the message from the First Order spy to whoever joined them at their table this time. They’ve told it fifty times already tonight, to a rotating audience of celebrating friends and strangers, but Finn still gets overexcited when he reveals the identity of the spy, and that’s worth watching over and over again.

And then there’s Rey. Poe doesn’t have a clear line of sight on her because she’s mostly hidden behind Finn, but she doesn’t add much to the stories they tell. She chips in now and then to share a detail, and she politely greets and accepts expressions of gratitude from everyone who comes by, but she’s quieter than a young woman celebrating has any right to be.

When Finn turns to looks at her, which he does rather a lot, his smile dims a little.

They last like this through most of the celebrations, not letting go of each other for more than the time it takes Poe to get some new drinks. Bit by bit, the crowd in the cave clears. Some return to their ships, others maybe even to their home worlds, if they’re close enough. Many of the ones who fought with them stay, so the cave is still filled with chatter and cheers, and it doesn’t seem like they are going to stop celebrating anytime soon. But there’s a general sense of the party breaking up, and Rey makes use of the spirit of the moment.

She gets up after the last of their table guests left and before new ones can arrive. Her smile is bright and genuine, but there is something missing from it. She reaches out to squeeze Finn’s shoulder and half of Poe’s hand around it.

“I’m heading back to the quarters. I need some quiet,” she says, and with a teasing nod towards Poe adds, “Keep Poe from the Ardees.”

“Hey, I haven’t had that much,” Poe protests and raises his cup of water demonstratively.

Finn is unimpressed by all of that. His brilliant smile falls, and worry takes its place. “Do you need company?”

Rey shakes her head. “No, thanks. You two keep celebrating.”

“Rey—“ Finn begins and gets to his feet. Poe’s left arm slides off his shoulders and Poe immediately uses it to grab Finn’s right one, before he can go and follow Rey, who gives them another smile and then turns and heads towards her alcove on the far right side of the cave.

“Leave her.”

Finn finds Poe’s eyes and clenches his jaw. “I don’t like leaving her alone.”

“I know.” Poe raises his arms defensively. “And you’re right about that, obviously. But she’s safe here, and she’s not gonna run off again. Give her some space.”

Finn hesitates for a moment, but then he sighs and drops back down on the bench. “The whole battle took a number on her. I can feel that,” he grumbles. “I wish she’d talk to us about it.”

“Give it time,” Poe advises. It’s been less than a day, after all. “Just enjoy yourself for the time being. Hey, we won the war!”

He can’t help but smile. The euphoria is throwing waves inside him, bubbling over, and then he can’t really make himself look worried anymore. It’s not that Rey’s strange distance doesn’t make him want to drag her back to the table and fill her up with Ardees or hugs or whatever makes her truly happy, but he’s also just had a hand in beating the First Order once and for all. He’s allowed to have a bit of a one-track mind tonight.

Finn has had less alcohol and is a better person than Poe, so he throws another dark glance at where Rey disappeared, but in the end Poe’s euphoria seems to infect him.

“Yeah. We won,” he says and grins. It’s not quite the blue giant smile, but it’s still bright as a star. He throws an arm around Poe, which is marvellous, raises his cup of whatever strange swill that bunch of Tatooine smugglers had on board when they answered the call to take down a Sith fleet, and shouts, “We won!”

Poe immediately answers the arm around his shoulders with one of his own around Finn’s and the toast with a raised cup of water. “We won!”

The people closest to their table turn around, looking for the source of the toast. Some find them, some don’t, but all of them raise their mugs and cups and drinking horns and respond in kind. Within seconds, the whole cave is cheering loudly, chanting “We won! We won! We won!”, and that makes Finn’s face light up like a supernova.

They join in the chant, because they started it and have a responsibility. Poe grins at Finn, and when his cheeks start hurting, he grins at the cave, toasting to every person he believes he has seen before. He finds Rose, who’s giggling like a giddy little girl with the other mechanics and gives both him and Finn a cheery wave. He finds Jannah and Chewie and Lando huddled together at one of the tables, and they all whoop when they notice Poe raising his cup in their direction. Not too far from their table, he finds Zorii, and that’s a whole thing.

She has finally taken off her helmet. She must have done that a while ago – not even Zorii has the lack of common sense to wear a helmet to a celebration – but Poe hasn’t seen her since the party started, so seeing her without it is new to him. She hasn’t really changed much. There are a few new scars on her jaw, probably from fistfights she got herself into, but other than that she still looks like she did years ago. That is to say, she’s still unfairly attractive.

She catches his gaze when he toasts to her, toasts back, and then starts making her way over to their table, where she flops down across from Poe and Finn. Her grin isn’t a star-bright one and never has been, but she’s grinning and that’s enough.

“Congratulations on taking down a Sith fleet.” She raises her cup at Finn, who immediately mirrors the motion.

“Congratulations on helping us take down a Sith fleet!”

“I had to, after what they did to Kijimi.” She downs the rest of her drink in one go. Poe wonders if he could still drink her under the table. Probably not. “Also, I might have a soft spot for this scoundrel.”

She boxes Poe in the upper arm. He can feel the bruise he used to constantly have there return.

“You’re the scoundrel here,” he tells her.

“Right, you went all righteous on us, I forgot.” Zorii glances at her empty cup in obvious disappointment. Her eyes wander up to the blue-ish liquid Finn has been nursing for a while. “What are you drinking?”

Finn eyes his drink with a slightly baffled frown. “No idea,” he admits. “The Tatooine smugglers brought it. It’s awful. It’s got more alcohol than taste.”

That’s enough for Zorii. She reaches out. “Can I?”

Finn nods and she snatches the cup from his hands. She takes one cautious sip, grimaces, and gulps down half of the cup’s contents. “This is disgusting. Mind if I keep it?”

“Go ahead. I have it on good authority that the Ardees is way better.” Finn shoves Poe as hard as he can without dislodging their embrace. Poe shoves back.

Zorii watches the two of them shove each other back and forth for a while and snorts into her newly acquired Tatooine swill. “Can’t believe you’ve made the step up the ladder from smuggler swill to Ardees,” she says in Poe’s direction. “I bet it’s the halfway decent kind from Coruscant, too. Next thing I know, you’ll be going around carrying bottles of Merenzane Gold.”

“You smuggled that once and hated it,” Poe reminds her.

Zorii gives him a grin that he can’t possibly avoid mirroring. “And then our contact gave me shit for drinking a sip and you flew us out through a canyon labyrinth.”

“Don’t forget the part where you provoked them.” Poe turns to Finn, who is listening intently. He loves a good story. “Our contact noticed we hadn’t fulfilled the contract and gotten all of the bottles to them unharmed, and of course Zorii here had to get up and tell them that they shouldn’t care because the sip she took tasted like bantha piss anyways. So I had to fly us out through a canyon.”

Zorii kicks him under the table and that still hurts like anything, but Finn bursts out laughing, and Poe gets caught up watching that.

“I thought you smuggled spice,” Finn asks, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Spice.” Poe shrugs. “Spiced booze. Same difference to most people.”

“We mostly did spice,” Zorii adds, “but we took on some other jobs as well when funds were low.”

Finn’s eyes are gleaming with curiosity. Much as he mocks the whole spice runner thing, he is still utterly weak for smuggler stories. Left to his own devices, he’ll find out every embarrassing detail about Poe’s rebellious smuggling phase by making Zorii tell him anecdotes.

“You gotta tell me how you know each other,” he says, more towards Zorii than towards Poe. “How did you meet? How did you end up in smuggling? What did you do together?”

Poe gulps down water. He meets Zorii’s eyes over the table and tries to send her a message through his look, but he can’t make up his mind about what he wants the message to be. He’s really, truly, too tipsy and euphoric to think about the clusterfucked can of worms he could open up right now.

Luckily, Zorii takes it from there. “You better ask Poe that one day,” she says with a telling smile. “When he’s in any state to tell a good story.”

Finn immediately takes the bait and turns to look at Poe, which is a difficult angle to handle with how wrapped up they are in each other’s arms, but he manages and Poe gets another load of starry brightness.

He laughs and shakes his head. “Another day, buddy. I’ve had way too much Ardees for that.”

“I thought you didn’t have that much,” Finn comments, and Poe shoves him again.

Zorii is already busy emptying her cup at a rapid speed. She sets it down on the table with a clonk, sighs loudly, wipes her mouth and gets up. “I’ll see where I can get more of this stuff,” she says. “See you two around.”

She smiles at them when she leaves. It has something of the old warmth that there used to be between them – her and Poe, that is, only that Poe currently feels unable to detach himself from Finn, so they might just as well be one person – and it makes something in his insides twist. Possibly the Ardees.

“See you around,” he replies and shoots her a smile in turn. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a bit of a question in his look again, but she acquits him with only a raised eyebrow.

Finn pats Poe on the back. “Great woman,” he says. “She’s fun.”

“She is,” Poe agrees. “Always was. And one hell of a pilot.”

“Can’t be as good as you,” Finn says and frowns at the table, probably noting the distinct lack of liquid in his cup.

Poe hands him his half-full cup of water with a smirk. “Never said she was.”

He slides his hand from Finn’s shoulder to the curve of his neck and squeezes, just so Finn knows he does appreciate the compliment. Finn smiles at him and takes the water. Poe smiles back. He gets another wave of euphoria then, when he realises that they’re here and they’re safe and it’s over, and he holds Finn tighter as he beams at him like he’s lost all control over his facial expressions and also his brain. Which may or may not be quite close to the truth.

Jannah joins them afterwards, bringing some new cups and some of the better, lighter booze. She and Finn reminisce about the First Order with unadulterated glee, and Finn gets overexcited again when he tells her how he shot General Hux in the leg.

“Took down Phasma, too,” he adds, and when Jannah laughs and exclaims, “No way!”, he tells that story too.

Poe watches them, attached to Finn’s side like a symbiotic fungus, and then he watches Rose join them and tell them stories about her sister, watches Chewie drink exorbitant amounts of alcohol before Lando drags him away, watches others come and go, until the band in the corner of the cave packs up and most people have headed out to make use of the rest of the night to catch some hours of sleep.

It’s around that time that Finn’s arm slips off his shoulder and there suddenly is an inch of empty space between them.

Finn looks to the place where the wall of the right side of the cave disappears behind the towering structures of the Tantive IV, the remnants of his smile faltering.

“I think I’ll go look for Rey,” he says. He turns to face Poe with something like a challenge in his eyes. “I know she’s awake. I can feel it.”

Poe cocks his head at him and gives him a light, lopsided smile. “Hey, no need to justify yourself. Go look for her.”

Finn frowns at him. “I thought you said—“

“Yeah, and she’s had space now, right?” He gives Finn’s shoulder a shove, and he takes it as the sign it is and gets to his feet. They both hesitate, Finn on the verge of leaving and Poe looking up at him, unsure what he’s feeling. “Tell Rey we’re all here for her,” he ends up saying.

Finn nods at him and clasps his shoulder with one very warm hand. “I’ll do. Stay away from the Ardees.”

Poe snorts and shoves him again, and then Finn is walking away, and Poe is looking into a cup of water, trying to order his thoughts.

-

He ends up leaving the cave only a short while later. For a while after that, he drifts aimlessly through the woods, until he realises he’s going in circles and finds himself at an open-air observation hub. Some of the screens are still on and blinking steadily, just in case some leftover First Order forces decide to pull some shit. But the people normally monitoring the screens aren’t here. They’re at the party or asleep somewhere, or part of some of the little groups of friends and family that have formed all around the base.

It’s the first time Poe has seen this place completely deserted. If he could feel the Force, he imagines, this is where he would see Leia. Her presence here is so strong he can almost sense it without any Force sensitivity at all. If he could see her, she’d be standing right there by the main monitor, in her first-row spot. She’d be an imposing figure despite her size, with her hair neatly done up and her robes expensive and orderly, and she’d have that youthful twinkle in her eyes when she’d talk to him.

But he can’t see her, so he looks up at the stars instead and thinks about all the people up there in the sky finally being free.

He’s still sitting there when Zorii walks past on the way back to her ship and stops when she sees him. He nods to her and waves her over, and she indulges him and takes a seat next to one of the communication consoles. She looks like she always did when she had gotten drunk and started sobering up far too early for her tastes. Her hair is hanging into her face and the kohl around her eyes is smudged. In the low light of the monitors, she looks bone pale.

He walked past her ship thrice just after he left the cave, because he failed to order his thoughts and feels like doing something stupid.

“Long night, huh?” he says.

Zorii shrugs. “We won a war. What did you expect?”

He remembers sitting on a roof with her, both less than a day ago and in another lifetime, talking about their future. Their prospects. Both times, neither of them had really thought they’d have any.

“What are you going to do now?” Poe asks.

Zorii looks at him for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she says and drops her gaze to the ground. “It’ll take me some time to get used to the idea that I could go anywhere.”

“Who are you telling that?” Poe leans back on the box he currently inhabits. “It’s crazy. I could fly all the way to Naboo if I wanted to, without meeting a single First Order ship.”

He grins at Zorii because she always dreamt of seeing Naboo. She gives him a weak smile in return.

“It’s funny,” she says. “I always wanted to get out of Kijimi, and now that it’s gone, I miss it.” She glances up at him and it’s almost like they’re back there, talking while they’re trying not to get snowed in. “The old crew and I got out, but I think we’re the only ones. It’s strange to think we’re the last people to really remember it. And you, of course.”

Poe almost flinches at that. It’s not a thought he’d ever thought he’d have, but she’s right, in a way. He isn’t from Kijimi like she is, and he had left long before he ever became the man he is now, but for a while ages ago, it was home.

He swallows and leans forward to hold out a hand. Zorii takes it without hesitation.

“You’re a great pilot,” he tells her. “We still need people to fly missions and make sure we get rid of what’s left of the First Order. You could apply.” He gives her his most winning grin. “I’m sure the General would put in a good word for you.”

Zorii smirks. “That’s nice of Finn.”

Poe kicks her shin without letting go of her hand. She kicks back.

“I’ll think about it,” she promises. “I won’t stay forever, though. I’m not the righteous Resistance hero you are. Though I’ve got to say,” she adds with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, “the title suits you.”

Poe laughs. “You like it?”

“I’m full of surprises.” She lets go of his hand, but in the warm night, it’s not much of a loss. “General Dameron. It’s hot.”

If anyone ever asked, Poe thinks, he’d blame her, because she knows precisely that he can’t just let that one go. She knows him. She’s known him for years, even though they haven’t met in longer than they ever knew each other.

He raises his eyebrows at her. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

Zorii, tease that she is, just laughs and leans back further. “You wish.”

He eyes her, looks her up and down. She’s still thin as a wisp, all her strength hidden in her lean arms. Her smile now wrinkles her cheeks twofold and makes the skin around her eyes crinkle. He barely remembers how her lips felt on his, but he still knows she was warm on a planet where it never stopped snowing.

“I kinda do,” he admits. “I never thought I’d see you again, but now that you’re here...” He spreads his arms in a vague gesture. “You meant a lot to me once.”

She holds his gaze for a very long moment, so long that Poe half-expects her to say it back, lean over and kiss him. She doesn’t, of course, because that wouldn’t be her style. Instead, she shakes her head.

“You don’t actually want that.”

He frowns. “I don’t?”

“No, you idiot. Neither of us does.”

She says it kindly, like she has genuine interest in explaining it to him. There’s nothing to explain though, he thinks, because she’s wrong. He wants her, at least a bit, like he’d wanted her and she’d wanted him when they had first become each other’s closest friends.

He wants to take her hand again and have her drag him to her ship, or to his quarters, or to some other abandoned place where she can press him up against a wall, take charge and make all the decisions for him. He wants to kiss her, because kissing her had always been easy. He wants to bury his head between her legs and block out the sounds of the world with her thighs pressed against his ears. Which means that this isn’t what he wants at all, but a convenient distraction. Kind of like smuggling.

Fuck.

“You want Finn,” Zorii says matter-of-factly. “Why don’t you go and ask him?”

Poe blinks. He sucks in a breath and plays with the idea of asking her how she got that idea, but it’s not like that question would yield any valuable information. He can’t imagine he’s very subtle, at least not to someone who knows what he’s like when he’s stupid and can’t stop flirting.

So he lets out that breath again and deflates. “I can’t.”

Zorii frowns. “Why not? He likes you. He wouldn’t drop you if you told him.” She smiles again. “I think he might say yes.”

Poe stares at her, who’s known Finn for a day and Rey for less, and imagines explaining to her what Finn is like, how they work together, how they are with Rey and how they would both give the world for her, and how whatever words Poe has for Finn have to stay unspoken for now. There’s something Finn never told Rey, too, and as far as Poe knows, that is what, in the long list of things that have to be said, should be said first.

“Finn’s in love with Rey,” he tells Zorii firmly.

Zorii merely shrugs. “So is half the base, if I got the right picture tonight. She has that kind of effect. She pulls people in.”

It’s true – if anyone could win over an angry vexis, it’s Rey – but Poe shakes his head. “This is different. They’re everything to each other. Finn loves her like... like she’s his galaxy, that’s it. He can feel how she’s doing, for fuck’s sake.”

Before he knows it, he’s smiling again. It’s halfway euphoria and halfway a tidal wave of love, and both intermingle and become indistinguishable once he yet again realises that they’re all safe and sound. He lets his arms fall to his sides, still grinning, and catches Zorii’s slightly baffled gaze.

“What I’m saying is, if you feel like anything, I’ll be free.”

Zorii lets out a bark of laughter. “Poe,” she says with an incredulous smile on her face. “Come on. What were we, ever?”

“We were friends,” he answers and smiles back at her. Then, he cocks his head and adds, “With certain benefits.”

“Call it what it was,” she demands. “We were fuckbuddies.”

She gets to her feet. Poe doesn’t rise with her, but she holds out a hand to him while she stands, and he takes it. He has the feeling that he won’t be seeing her without her helmet again very soon, so he takes this moment to indulge and hold their eye contact for as long as possible.

She’s right, of course. He was never in love with Zorii. He was young and comfortable and horny with Zorii, and that had made sleeping with her one of the easiest things he had ever done in his life. He really, really wishes that things could just be easy again for once. Now that the hardest part is done, it feels like he damn well deserves that.

But Zorii has to ruin that, because she keeps looking into his eyes when she says softly, “He’s more than that.”

And she’s right about that too, of course.

Poe swallows around nothing and squeezes her hand. “We were friends,” he repeats. It’s an easy thing to say, but it’s a true one, and her eyes soften when he says it.

“We were,” she agrees and drops his hand. “But I’m not going to sleep with you because of that.”

“Alright.” He throws her a mock-salute. “Noted.”

That makes her grin again, and that’s a definite win.

“Speaking of,” she begins. The look in her eyes shifts slightly to accommodate some of the old spark Poe never realised he’d missed. “Who’s that girl I saw around Finn? The curly one?”

Poe’s eyes widen, then his smile does the same, and he doesn’t even try to contain the amusement in his voice when he says, “Jannah? We found her on Kef Bir with a bunch of other deserters from the First Order. She helped Finn take the command ship out.”

Zorii seems to soak that piece of information up like a sponge. She turns her whole upper body in the direction of the cave where, presumably, Jannah currently resides. “First Order deserter, you say? She’s quite something. Do you mind if I...?”

Poe makes a sweeping gesture with his right arm. “Go ahead, for all I care. If you want to ask someone for permission, make it Lando. Looks like he’s adopted her already.”

“Noted.” Zorii runs both hands through her hair, crosses her arms behind her neck and leans back in an impressive stretch. When she comes up again, she looks up at the sky.

Poe follows her gaze for a moment, but he’s watched the stars for so long tonight that watching Zorii is a lot more interesting. Behind the kohl, her eyes are bloodshot and tired.

“I’ll go find some sleep,” she decides eventually. “I’ll get back to you about piloting for the Resistance. Maybe it’ll do me good to have something to do.”

“Would be great to work with you again,” Poe says truthfully.

She grants him one of her warmest looks. “You too. And you can’t try to drag me into Resistance bullshit if that’s what we’re doing in the first place.” She weasels out of the hub, her eyes fixed to the ground so she doesn’t catch her boots on any cables. Once she’s made it out, she throws another glance back at him. “Sweet dreams, if you get to it.”

“You too. And hey.” Poe gives the air an energetic punch. “We won the war!”

Zorii laughs brightly when she leaves, and that lessens the disappointment a bit that spreads through Poe’s whole body with every step she takes away from him. He watches her walk away until he can’t see her anymore and wonders if things would be any different if she were just as easy as he is at the moment.

Well, he’d be in bed with her now instead of sitting in an abandoned open-air observation hub, hopefully still doing fun stuff, though with the amount of euphoria and sexual frustration he’s built up, he wouldn’t count on that. But the first time he’d tried to cover up how out of place he’d felt with a new coat of paint, he had almost been arrested fifty times over for smuggling spice and ended up crawling back to cower at Leia’s feet once he had looked at the stars one too many times and thought about the misery all the people up there were going through and that he was doing nothing against.

Poe props his elbows up on his knees, folds his hands and stares at the peaceful state of the galaxy the screen in front of him reflects. It’s over, he tells himself. He’ll just need some time to get used to that, and then he can think about the whole rest.

When he finally leaves the hub and heads back to his quarters, the first rays of sunlight are starting to colour the horizon violet. He finds Finn sound asleep on the other narrow military bed and looks around to consider that their lousy little cell of a bedroom could now officially be called the Generals’ quarters.

He sits down and hunches over on his own bed when his eyes return to Finn.

For a moment, Poe has the impulse to shake him awake and do an even stupider thing than asking Zorii had been. He fights it back, throws his boots and his clothes in the corner where they don’t bother anyone, and goes to sleep.

-

The morning after is a morning after so many things that it takes up the whole day. It’s a morning after three and a half hours of sleep, for one, which Poe notices a few minutes after Finn shakes him awake and groggily grumbles something about the Generals having to be awake for the first diplomatic meetings and post-victory plans.

Poe sucks at diplomatic meetings, especially since it’s also the morning after he drank a considerable amount of Ardees. He woke up to with some distress realise that he’s old enough to have a slight headache, although he had been mostly sober when he went to sleep. In the state he’s in, he’d wager that he has the brain function of a four-year-old and is predetermined to offend every single one of the intergalactic envoys individually within the first five minutes of meeting them.

He’s on his way to the first post-victory strategy meeting and still letting his thoughts on that problem run in circles, in hope of a solution suddenly appearing at a thought junction he’s been over twenty times already, when Lando brushes past him with a nod and Poe gets the best idea of his life. Or the morning, anyways.

“Lando!” he calls and makes a grab for Lando’s arm. “Lando, Lando, Lando.”

Poe spins him around to face him and, ignoring the way Lando raises his eyebrows in surprise, points his index finger at him. “I need you to take over the diplomatic meetings. Finn and I can’t do it, and we need someone with enough gravitas to make them respect us. You’re not a Resistance General, but you were a General of the old Rebellion, so they’ll listen to you.”

The taste of victory, still fresh in the morning air, has eradicated his initial tiredness and pumped him full of adrenalin. He bounces on his heels to get rid of some excess energy. “You ran Cloud City for years. If anyone can get us a decent standing with the higher-ups of the galaxy, it’s you.”

Lando watches him bounce for a second, then he clasps his hands together and gives Poe a challenging smile paired with a rather fond look. “What would I get out of that one?”

“My eternal gratitude,” Poe answers without missing a beat. “Come on. You’re our only chance to get anywhere near the diplomatic success Leia would’ve gotten us.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Lando says and starts walking back to where he had come from. “Who do you need me to talk to?”

Poe grips his shoulder, both to show how deeply grateful he is and to steer him in the right direction. “I’ll give you a rundown of the schedule once we get to the command centre and find someone who knows it, because fuck me if I can remember all of that.”

Lando laughs heartily at that. He might not be dressed in suits and expensive capes anymore like he had been when Poe first saw him, but he still has the charisma of an entrepreneur, and hopefully the chutzpah of a conman. They’ll need every bit of that today.

“Out of interest,” Lando says and throws Poe a look out of the corners of his eyes. “Why can’t you and Finn do it?”

“I suck at diplomacy,” Poe readily admits. “And Finn used to be a stormtrooper. You know I love the guy, but he can barely hold a polite dinner conversation.”

“I noticed that with Jannah last night.” Lando’s eyes shine when he says her name. Damn, he really took to her. “They didn’t teach them manners in the First Order, did they?”

“Not the ones that matter,” Poe says, his head full of vivid memories of Finn’s first weeks at Resistance bases, all the faux pas he’d inevitably committed and all the old habits he’d had to unlearn.

“They’ll get it, with the right guidance,” Lando reckons. If there’s an insinuation somewhere in there, he doesn’t drag it out. “Who else did you think of to take over the diplomacy? It’d be shabby of me to do it alone.”

Poe shrugs. “I only just thought of you when you walked past me. Take whoever you think could do it.”

Lando gives him the most exasperated yet resigned look anyone has ever given him, including Leia, and that counts for something. But he doesn’t cop out, and when they reach the command centre, he sends Poe off with a light shove and assures him he’ll take it from here.

Poe doesn’t waste a second and goes looking for Finn.

He finds him just outside the central cave, hurrying towards them with energetic steps. Poe breaks into a half-jog to meet him.

“General,” Finn calls out to him with a grin.

Poe gives his upper arm a squeeze as soon as he reaches him. “General,” he greets back and nods once. “I made Lando take over the diplomatic meetings.”

“Thank fuck!” Finn exclaims. He gives Poe’s shoulder a strong, appreciative pat. “I’m awful at diplomacy.”

“Yeah, me too. I can’t keep my mouth shut when I really should.”

“You really can’t.” Finn looks up at the command centre they’re headed towards and frowns. “How are we going to do this if we’re not even able to talk to our allies?”

Poe catches his gaze and holds it for a few moments, like looking at Finn could give him some kind of epiphany or make him able to access Leia’s wisdom somehow. It doesn’t, so he says, “No idea.” He cocks his head in the direction of the command centre. “At least we’re really good at fighting and flying.”

“You have to give us that,” Finn agrees. “We took down the First Order. Final Order. Whatever.”

Poe laughs loudly and pats him on the back. “Give me an update on the situation,” he requests.

Finn complies immediately. “I’m done with the inventory of the ships. Rose says we’ll have a decent undamaged fleet again by tomorrow at the latest.”

“Bless her.” Poe lets out a heavy breath that lifts a large weight off his shoulders.

The fleet had been an issue already discussed the day before, just after they’d come back from Exegol and noticed that most of the Resistance fighters that had made it out had been heavily damaged. Rose had considered it a miracle that Poe’s own X-Wing had still been able to stay in the air.

Various new allies had already offered to lend them ships for their remaining missions, and the mechanics had immediately started fixing what could be fixed, but it hadn’t been clear at all whether that would be enough for them to be able to move out. Another reason for Lando to do diplomacy and get them some new sponsors for the final strikes against First Order remnants, but that Rose is confident about their own capacities is a huge relief.

“Chewie is fixing up the Falcon,” Finn continues his update. “It’s probably gonna survive this one too, but he told me to give you some bad news.”

He says this with a gleeful edge in his voice that makes Poe’s first impulse to spontaneously punch a tree and break his knuckles vanish as soon as it appears.

“What is it?”

Finn turns to watch him expectantly. “You’re banned from the Falcon,” he says, and he’s still fucking grinning while he does it. “Not just the cockpit. The whole thing.”

“I’m what?!” Poe stops dead in his tracks and gapes at Finn. “Come on! I’ve been flying the Falcon on missions for months! I’m the best pilot we have!”

Finn has the audacity to laugh at him. “I know, I told him not to be that harsh. But he’s not backing down. I think he really didn’t like the light-speed skipping.”

“I had to do that!” Poe insists. He spreads his arms wide for emphasis. “We were getting shot at! It was our only way out!”

“Take that up with Chewie,” Finn says. “I did what I could.”

“We saved Chewie’s furry ass from a First Order ship!” Poe growls. “He owes us!”

“You almost crashed the Falcon to pulp – what was it, twice? – in the past days alone,” Finn reminds him. He starts walking towards the command centre again, and Poe groans and stomps after him.

“He still can’t just ban me from it,” he mutters.

“Can,” Finn argues. “Did.”

He looks like he’s doing his best not to laugh out loud, and he’s doing absolutely nothing to hide his glee. Poe hates that he loves him.

When they take centre stage at the command centre together, Finn still has a grin on his face and Poe lets that infect him. He lets his eyes wander over the circle of friends that has formed around the centre and takes in every face, everyone who lived. He can’t help but feel the presence of those who are missing more heavily than that of the ones who are here.

He starts the meeting with a speech. He reminds them of their victory, and the familiar faces around him start beaming. Every single one of them played their own vital role in this impossible victory, and he tells them that until he feels like he’s going to choke up any second and he can see at least two people’s eyes swimming. Then he hands the lead over to Finn, who thanks them all again, but moves on with the speech and points out that it isn’t over yet, and that they’ll need every bit of support and strength they can get.

They all cheer for them afterwards, and Poe and Finn join in to make it a cheer for all of them. It doesn’t take long though. They fall silent again only a few euphoric moments later and get to work.

Reports have come in from all over the galaxy, from where the First Order still has strongholds that didn’t break up when they realised their loss. Many planetary governments have already started their own campaigns to get rid of them, but some are too weak to manage on their own and request assistance. In other, especially more remote parts of the galaxy, there simply aren’t any powerful governments to send out forces. The ensuing First Order nests are probably going to give them something to fight against for months to come.

Other worlds have always been strongholds – some notably since the early days of the Empire – and continue to be. The delicate balance between diplomacy and kicking First Order ass required for those goes over Poe’s head for now. He’s planning to fully concentrate on the kicking ass part for at least another month.

Lieutenant Connix gets to the heart of the issue half an hour into the meeting when she says, “I still can’t believe we really won. It doesn’t feel real at all.”

Planning the aftermath of the First Order’s demise is so surreal at first that they all forget over and over that this is what they’re doing. Most of them periodically fall back into the mindset they’ve all become so used to over the past years, where the fear of new attacks looms higher than everything else and hope is something to be clung to desperately, despite all the odds saying that it’s futile.

The meeting is full of tense voices and hurried looks at screens, but it’s also full of moments of realisation, when someone stops in their tracks, looks around in the middle of a sentence and finds themselves on the side of victory again.

Gradually, they all get used to it. Two hours in, Connix starts smiling and doesn’t stop anymore.

Poe starts actively reminding himself of their victory every few minutes. War is second nature by now, maybe first if he really thinks about it, and not being at war is such a weird concept that he can’t grasp it at all. Instead, he focuses on having won a battle, on moving on from there, and on Finn.

They fall back into their accustomed routine immediately. They throw ideas and concepts back and forth, half-sentences that they finish for each other, plans that no one in the circle gets but them, until they realise that not everyone is on their wavelength and understands the strategy they’ve just discussed through looks, vague gestures, and single keywords embedded in incoherent sentence fragments. They work together like two intricate parts of the inner machinery of a spaceship.

Poe is leaning over the central monitor and pressed against Finn’s side when he realises that they’ve been over everything and there’s nothing more to say for the moment. He slaps the console in front of him and straightens up again, letting the tense satisfaction of a strategy well discussed flow through his bloodstream.

“Alright! We’re done here! Good work, everyone!”

Breaths are let out, knuckles crack, tentative chatter starts up and the rigid order of their placement in the centre begins to liquefy. Poe makes the rounds and thanks everyone individually, shaking hands and giving high fives. Finally, he finds Finn again, who grasps his hand with a proud smile and pulls him in for a brief, tight hug.

They split up afterwards and head out to all corners of the base. Poe starts recruiting pilots for the upcoming missions, which mostly involves going up to everyone who has a spaceship and asking them if they’d be up to shoot at some more First Order troops. Most people are understandably hesitant to risk anything again now that the worst threat is dealt with, but a surprising amount of those who stuck around the base had only been waiting for someone to ask.

On his way to the clearing where many of their spontaneous allies parked their ships, Poe spots Lando, who is having an intense conversation with a group of newly arrived diplomatic envoys. Poe mentally pats himself on the back for delegating this part of the proceedings to him. His heart does a leap and his smile widens when he realises that Rey is with Lando, shaking hands and sharing words with the diplomats and undoubtedly charming them with her honesty and kindness.

Rey catches sight of him when Lando pulls the main envoy to the side and she’s out of the focus of attention for a moment. Poe waves and earns a smile in return. Then he gives her a series of complicated signs to convey that he has to get out of here before any of the envoys notice he’s there, and quickly ducks behind a large bush to get out of their line of sight. The last thing he sees of the group is Rey laughing into her fist.

Poe makes a plan to find her after they’re both done with their work for the day. He crosses paths with Connix again after he convinces three hobby pilots and Rebellion enthusiasts from Chandrila to join their fleet, and makes her recount the schedule for the diplomatic meetings to him. There aren’t many left, even with some new envoys and a steady stream of official messages showing up, so Poe resolves to hurry up with his recruitment efforts.

But by the time his steps lead him back to the cave, bouncing with the energy more easy recruitments and the ensuing bath in the victory cheer have given him, Rey is nowhere to be found.

He does meet Lando, who is by the looks of it teaching Jannah how to play sabacc, though Poe doesn’t particularly want to ask. He sits down with them for a moment and watches Jannah practise shuffling cards while Lando tells him about the outcome of the first negotiations in detail. Poe claps him on the back once he’s done, because he ensured more positive affiliations and possible support than any of them would have expected to get.

“They want to help,” Lando assures him. “I didn’t even have to play cards with anyone.”

“Speaking of.” Jannah slides the deck of cards over the table in Poe’s direction. “Do you want to play?”

Poe, who is halfway up on his feet already, stops in his motion to slide the cards back. “Against Lando? I’m not that mad.” He leans over the table, like there’s any way Lando wouldn’t hear him if he just looked at Jannah. “Careful. He cheats.”

“With you? Of course,” Lando says and leans back to smirk at him. “But not with someone who’s just learning.”

“Real chivalrous of you.” Poe takes a step back from the table. They’re not too far from Rey’s alcove, which he has already climbed up to twice to no avail, and there is still no sign of her. He looks at Lando, who is handing out cards. “Do you know where Rey went?”

To his disappointment, Lando shakes his head. “She headed off after we got out of the last meeting. She did a fantastic job today. Having a Jedi there would have made enough of an impression on most of them, but she won them over immediately.” He smiles with deep, genuine fondness. “When they talk to her, people know that they can trust her. I’ll want her back for the second round of negotiations.”

“She’s great,” Poe agrees. He’s very close to adding one or two beloved stories about Rey to the mix, but he realises in time that this isn’t what he came for and his smile drops. “That doesn’t tell me where she is, though.”

Lando picks up his hand of cards and eyes it while he answers, “I can’t help you with that. Maybe you should try the mechanics’ bay.”

“Already did,” Poe sighs and turns to leave. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check again.

-

Rey is not at the mechanics’ bay. She isn’t anywhere else either, and Poe can’t spend the whole day looking for her. He has duties as a General to attend, and that’s tough enough with the sheer number of aftermaths happening in one day.

When he finally catches a break from tweaking strategies and encouraging friends, sharing celebratory words with strangers and thanking allies, he drops onto a leftover party bench next to the Tantive IV with all the elegance of a wet pile of rags, lies his upper body down on the table and buries his face in his elbow.

The dark around his eyes is very welcome, although he can see First Order blaster lasers behind his eyelids as soon as he loses focus.

He stays there for a while, counting his breaths. The lack of sleep is catching up with him, so half of his brain is out of commission. He might just accept that as his perpetual state of being. At least like this, he can’t think too much and come to stupid conclusions.

When he starts feeling silly lying on a table with all these people who are technically his subordinates walking and chatting around him, he risks one glance out of the comfortable crook of his arm.

He immediately catches eye of Zorii leaning against a wall, groans, and blinks himself awake to wave her over.

She’s wearing her helmet, so he can’t check if his impression is accurate, but she sounds cheerfully sarcastic when she takes a seat in front of him and says, “Oh good, you’re awake.”

He doesn’t have it in him to kick her for that. Instead, he rubs his eyes until he sees stars. “Were you looking for me?”

She folds her hands on the table. “I was. I heard you’re all over the base, recruiting pilots.”

“For taking out the rest of the strongholds, yeah.” Poe winces when he tries to straighten up fully and stretches his arms over his head, in a most likely futile attempt to make the tension in his shoulders go away. “It’s just what I told you about.”

Zorii leans forward. “I made up my mind. I want to join you.”

That gives Poe a new burst of energy that he immediately translates into a wide smile. “Great! We need pilots like you.”

“The old crew is willing to join as well.” Zorii catches the fist Poe was just about to pump and adds, “But only if you deign to pay them a visit.”

She sounds amused, but Poe’s guts twist with dread at the very thought.

“Depends,” he says. “How badly are they going to beat me up?”

Zorii doesn’t take the bait. She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t punch him, doesn’t even make any of the series of teasing comments that are undoubtedly on her mind. Instead, she keeps her hand on his for a moment longer and says quietly, “They came. What do you think?”

The dread in Poe’s guts wanders up to his throat and turns into guilt. “Alright,” he agrees, despite his myriad of instincts screaming out against it. Since they’re the same instincts that told him it would be a great idea to fuck Zorii one day after seeing her again, he elects to ignore them. “I’ll go talk to them. The first squadron moves out tomorrow morning. Do you think I’ll get the chance before that?”

“Make an effort,” Zorii deadpans. “Not now though. They’re all over the base. We’ll be back with the ships tonight.”

“I’ll be there.” And because Poe has a history of saying that to her and that history doesn’t reflect too well on him, he adds, “Promise.”

She pats his hand again. That alone is more than he’d expected and a ton more than he deserves.

Something above Poe’s right shoulder seems to catch Zorii’s interest. She lifts her head, stops touching his hand and points her chin in that direction. “Your fellow General is over there.”

Poe whips around with energy he really shouldn’t have. His arm is raised in a wave before he catches sight of Finn, who is indeed coming their way, apparently caught up in a passionate conversation with Jannah.

Poe throws a meaningful cock of one eyebrow back at Zorii, takes two fingers into his mouth and lets out a piercing whistle.

“Finn! Jannah! Over here!”

Finn lights up when he spots them, like sunrise, like a blue giant. He jogs over to their table, Jannah in tow, and puts a hand on Poe’s shoulder.

“Hey! I heard you got us a squadron.”

“I heard you got us scouting teams,” Poe replies and grasps Finn’s hand. He lingers, just a moment, before he lets go, makes a fist and raises it in Jannah’s direction.

She bumps it with a big grin.

Finn’s hand is still on Poe’s shoulder, which he squeezes twice. “The last team just got back,” he says. “They’ve got some information you’ll want to hear. Jannah and I were just talking about it.”

That sounds exciting and important enough, but Poe has only just returned to the world after lying on a table for longer than anyone should ever do that, and he’s not feeling up for another strategy meeting, even if it only involves what he’s come to call his inner circle.

“Can that wait an hour?” he asks, and fortunately, Finn nods.

“It doesn’t change any plans. Actually, it makes them easier.”

“Fantastic.” He glances at Zorii, who is watching them, and makes a gesture in her direction. “Jannah! Have you met Zorii?”

“Only in passing, I think.” Jannah gives Zorii a once-over. “Though the helmet makes it hard to tell.”

Almost obediently, Zorii opens the tension locks on her helmet and pulls it off. Her eyes are still the tiniest bit red, but her smile is confident. She holds out a hand to Jannah.

“Zorii Bliss.”

“Just Jannah,” Jannah says and shakes her hand briefly, but firmly, going by the way Zorii’s eyes widen a little. “We don’t get last names in the First Order.”

“We don’t get names in the First Order,” Finn corrects. He nudges Poe, who moves over to make room for Finn to sit down.

Poe elbows him and corrects further: “Didn’t.”

That makes Finn look extremely satisfied. Jannah, who has taken a seat next to Zorii, meanwhile looks incredulous, like she shares Connix’ issue with believing any of this is real.

“I can’t get used to them being gone,” she says with a light shake of her head that makes her curls bounce. “I thought it would be enough to be free of them on Kef Bir. But now they got what they deserved, and we could go anywhere.”

She grins, her eyes fixed on Finn. He looks at her with the astonishing amount of warmth that is usually reserved for his closest friends.

Poe catches Zorii’s gaze, who swallows and looks at the table instead, at Jannah’s hands clenched to fists there.

“It’s incredible,” Jannah continues. “There’s so much to do that I’d never thought we’d get to try. Lando taught me how to play sabacc today.”

“I know. Did he cheat?” Poe asks her.

Jannah shakes her head. “He taught me a few tricks, though,” she adds in what might be a challenge. He raises his eyebrows at her, and she raises hers back. “Are you up for a match?”

She looks at Poe first and then throws one glance at Zorii, who straightens up at the suggestion.

“I am. I’ve got a deck in my ship.”

Jannah seems immensely satisfied with that, but Poe interrupts her before she can say anything to grin widely at Zorii.

“Are you telling me that you left Kijimi to fight Sith, and what you took was a deck of sabacc cards?”

Zorii leans back and gives him a slightly venomous look, which Poe counters with an almost imperceptible cock of his head. Wingmanning only goes so far, and it doesn’t top the opportunity to make fun of an old friend; she should know that. 

“You never know when you need one,” Zorii replies with the tone, the grin, and the posture of a smuggler. It’s a fairly graceful recovery, so Poe decides to let her get away with that. He regrets it one second later, when she raises her brows at him and asks, “Do you want to join?”

“No, thanks.” Poe holds her gaze while he finds Finn’s shoulder with his hand and pats it. “I’ve got strategy to discuss with my fellow General.”

They’re at an impasse, so they break eye contact. Zorii looks at Jannah, probably hoping to continue making plans, but Jannah doesn’t pick up on it. Poe looks at Finn, who directs a vaguely irritated glare at all of them.

“Why does everyone but me know how to play that game?” He gestures at Jannah. “Jannah’s been here for a day and got taught how to do it.”

Poe squeezes his shoulder and laughs. “I’d teach you, but you’d be better off asking Lando. The last time I played, I got my ass handed back to me.”

“Not just the last time,” Zorii comments. “I always beat you.”

“That’s because you wear a helmet while playing. That’s not a fair tactic.”

“Smuggler sabacc isn’t a fair game,” she counters. “And it wouldn’t matter if you were able to put on a poker face.”

“So I’ll ask Lando,” Finn cuts in. “Good to be catching up on things.”

Poe grabs the metaphorical rope he’s been thrown with both hands to pull himself out of the pit of being humiliated for his lack of gambling skills.

“We’ve got all the time in the universe for that now.” He nudges Finn again. “I never realised you never got taught sabacc.”

“First Order,” Finn says, as if that’s self-explanatory, and shrugs.

“Yeah, but come on. You’ve got to have had some card games even in the First Order.”

“We had card games alright,” Finn huffs, “but not sabacc.”

“We had our own games,” Jannah adds. Her smile is a little strained, her voice a little bitter, but she’s grinning. “You weren’t allowed to wager anything playing games as a stormtrooper, because you didn’t have any personal possessions.”

“Because you didn’t have a personality!” Finn adds with the same bitter cheer. They look at each other and laugh, like dehumanisation is the most hilarious thing they’ve ever witnessed.

Poe and Zorii share a look and a frown, but neither of them comments on it. It’s like galactic war jokes, Poe reckons. You’ve got to have been there to really get them.

When she’s stopped laughing, Jannah drags a hand over her face and sighs. “I’m glad they’re gone.” Then she looks up at Poe with something more urgent in her eyes. “Speaking of. I want to be a part of the rest of it, too. I want to bring them down. I’ve already told Finn, but I’d be up to join your squadron.”

“I’ve expected nothing less,” Poe says. He didn’t really hit it off with her like Finn did, but watching her alone gave him absolute trust in her abilities and loyalty. And he knows he probably owes Finn’s life to her. That might have something to do with the fondness he has for her, too.

“What kind of ships can you fly?” he asks, brain briefly switching to General mode. He has yet to see her steer anything inorganic other than the junk abomination she’d called a skiff.

“I got the basic training,” Jannah answers, “but I never got far enough to become a pilot. And it’s been ages since I’ve flown anything.”

Poe nods in contemplation. That’s a little better than Finn, then, but still not enough to board an X-Wing and fly it into battle.

“We’ll need infantry once we tackle the bigger First Order nests,” he says. “That might take a while, but I really wouldn’t say no to having some cavalry around, too.”

Jannah nods. “Can do. But I want to help where I can.” The look she gives him has a certain desperation to it, and in a lower voice, she adds, “I need to.”

Finn reaches out and grasps Poe’s wrist. “She knows the First Order from the inside,” he urges. “They all do. That’s what we were talking about after we got word from the scouting teams.”

Poe mentally checks the time. His hour isn’t over yet, and a large part of him wants to point that out and insist on waiting with the strategy talk until he’s awake again, but if he’s honest with himself, his present company has woken him up thoroughly.

Finn’s look is asking him for confirmation, and Poe gives it to him with a curt nod. “Lay it on me.”

“They never got around updating their ships in most of the remote areas,” Finn starts without missing a beat. He’s sitting ramrod straight suddenly, and the intensity in his voice speaks volumes of how impatiently he waited for the chance to share this information. “Meaning that Jannah and I know how they work. The teams mapped all the structures they could find on the surface too, and I know those by heart.”

He grips Poe’s arm tighter. “All First Order ground bases look the same—“

“—to make moving troops easier,” Poe finishes for him. “I know.”

“So we’re dealing with technology we know in the nests,” Finn ends seamlessly.

“That could give us a big advantage.” Zorii voices what Poe is thinking. “In case we need it.”

They don’t, not really. But they’re in a delicate situation despite their victory, with most of their own fleet gone and more people lost than Poe strictly wants to think about right now. They have one Jedi left, and two Generals who are currently bullshitting their way through their duties, and a fleet mostly made up of borrowed ships and borrowed lives. Every advantage they have saves some of the latter.

“My people and I could accompany the missions,” Jannah suggests. “We could be guides even if we can’t help by fighting.”

Poe doesn’t have the heart to tell her that while insider information on the First Order is a strategist’s blessing and Finn’s knowledge was crucial to getting them where they are now, they already have enough of that to confidently handle those remaining fights. They have maps of typical First Order base structures, pieced together from scouting missions and completed in detail with the help of Finn’s memory. They know about the basic layout of a star destroyer, First Order rank structures, and the whole shebang of information a simple stormtrooper used to get.

Poe knows that Finn is fully aware of that. Still, the way he looks first at Jannah and then at Poe is slightly desperate, and Poe accepts that neither of them can tell Jannah to her face that having a bunch of former stormtroopers around will be convenient, but not exactly vital.

“We’ll cross the bridge to taking out the nests when we get to it,” he decides. “For now, we mostly need pilots.”

He’s going somewhere with this. He just needs to know where. In the meantime, the look he gives Jannah is almost apologetic, though he doesn’t know if she picks up on it, because she swallows heavily and draws back her shoulders in obvious disappointment.

She doesn’t press, though, but asks, “Is there anything else to do around the base?”

Finn perks up. “How good are you with mechanics?”

“Pretty good. All of us are.” Jannah eyes him with new hope. “We made all our gear ourselves from what we had with us, our ship and old Imperial junk.”

Finn’s hand, that he apparently forgot to take off Poe’s wrist, tightens again. “You can help Rose out with fixing up the ships. We don’t have enough mechanics to handle all that.”

That is definitely true. Rose would probably fall down at their feet with gratitude for getting her a whole company of mechanically adept helpers. Or she’d do something along those lines, anyways. Rose isn’t one to fall down at people’s feet.

Jannah seems happier with that suggestion than with anything else so far, and Finn is visibly relieved to have averted the crisis, but Poe is still hung up on a word or two of what Jannah said.

“Wait,” he throws in. “Did you say you had a ship?”

Jannah frowns at him. “We hijacked one when we deserted. It got us to Kef Bir.”

Poe leans forward. “Who flew that one?”

He’s got enough pilots, technically, but it’s never wrong to find one more. So his first reaction is disappointment when Jannah says, matter-of-factly, “Me.”

Then, he rethinks that, stops slouching on his seat and points at her. “So you can fly.”

“I got the basic training,” Jannah repeats. “That made me the best pilot out of the company, but not really a pilot. I got us to Kef Bir and crashed the ship there.”

Poe glances at Zorii. He might know where he is going with this now. “That’s something,” he says to Jannah, who doesn’t look convinced at all.

“I crash-landed.”

“On Kef Bir,” Poe insists. He spreads his arms, dislodging Finn’s hand, and shrugs. “ _I_ crash-landed on Kef Bir! That doesn’t mean anything.”

It kind of does, and it’s kind of a stupid thing to say that it doesn’t. Finn doesn’t voice his concerns, but his intensely perplexed look at Poe makes it clear that this is exactly what he’s thinking.

“I can’t fly an X-Wing,” Jannah maintains.

“Yet,” Poe points out. “You could learn.” He keeps his eyes fixed on Jannah until she responds with a distinctly interested look. Then he indicates Zorii with a nod. “I’ve got too much on my plate to teach you, but Zorii here is a great pilot, and she’s got a ship.”

Jannah’s eyes start to shine. “I’ve always wanted to learn.”

She turns her whole body around to face Zorii. Zorii does the same, and then there they are, sitting face to face. Zorii has one shoulder drawn back, one hand inching towards Jannah on the table and confidence in her eyes and her voice when she says, “Sure. I’d be happy to.”

She’s definitely still got it, and Poe is very glad she’s made her stance on them rekindling the benefits part of their former friendship so abundantly clear. He can feel Finn’s eyes on him, which would make him even less comfortable in his skin than he is now if he’d have any reason to entertain bad ideas about getting whatever fix he’d expected from Zorii.

What he gets from Zorii right now is a look he can’t quite place. Her attention is back on Jannah a moment later, so he doesn’t bother trying.

“If we hurry with the take-off, we’ll be back before sundown.”

“What, right now?” Jannah asks, but she says it in such a bright and eager way that it’s obvious that she’d have no objections.

Zorii’s thin lips spread into a wide, warm smile. “Why not?”

“Best to start early,” Poe throws in, because he’s nothing if not a dedicated wingman. “Nothing’s better than loads of training to make you perfect.”

“If you change your mind, we can still play sabacc.” Zorii snatches up her helmet and gets to her feet, and after a moment of consideration and one look at Finn, Jannah follows suit.

“Alright.” She holds out a fist to Poe, which he bumps, the realisation dawning on him that he probably made her think it’s a common Resistance greeting. Finn reaches out before Jannah can turn towards him and they grasp each other’s hands firmly. “I’ll see you around,” Jannah says.

“Don’t crash anything,” Finn grins.

“And watch out if you play sabacc,” Poe calls after the two women once they turn to leave. “She cheats, but she’s worse at it than Lando.”

Zorii flips him off, which is especially rude considering that he just landed her a date. For this offensive lack of gratitude alone, she owes him at least two pints of whatever ends up being the first thing they find if they one day leave this base.

Poe is also becoming increasingly aware of Finn looking at him with some intensity. Since Finn is not actually in his line of sight, he can’t tell if the look is a good one or a bad one, but not finding out immediately sounds like a good prospect. He keeps watching Zorii and Jannah make their way through the busy stream of people bustling about the cave, until Finn shatters his resolve by putting a hand on his shoulder.

He can’t not look at Finn if his hand is on his shoulder.

Poe turns to find that Finn is levelling a sceptical glare at him, with his brows drawn together and a small line appearing between them. The moment he catches Poe’s eyes, he gives his shoulder a light shove.

“Are you trying to set Jannah up with your spice smuggler friend?”

Poe raises his hands defensively. “Hey, I’m just the wingman. Take that up with Zorii.”

“I might,” Finn warns. He glances at the small figures of Jannah and Zorii where they finally disappear behind a group of people carrying what looks like defunct First Order equipment.

“Zorii can take a no,” Poe reassures him. Zorii’s great at nos. Currently mostly at giving them. “And Jannah looks like she knows what she wants.”

“Yeah, but if Jannah wants me to, I’ll take this up with Zorii.” Finn throws his legs over the bench so that he can lean against the table and fully face Poe. His sceptical expression has mostly been replaced with the teasing spark that has become so familiar over the past months, but the furrow on his brow hasn’t been fully smoothed over. “Anyways. I thought that you and Zorii were…”

He makes a shaky gesture that could mean anything from “fucking” to “madly in love and set on eloping to Hosnian Prime before it got blown up”.

Half the implications are true, half of them are outlandish, and Poe settles on answering, “Never seriously. We were friends.” He pauses. “Are friends again, I guess. But we were friends—“he gives first Finn and then the table a meaningful look”—with, hm, benefits.”

Poe watches Finn take that in, watches the furrow deepen into a frown at first while he arranges things in his head and then vanish completely.

“Not anymore, though,” Poe adds quickly.

“Didn’t really think so,” Finn deadpans with a nod in the direction Zorii went off to while staring at Jannah.

Poe decides not to mention his recent desperate misadventures with walking past Zorii’s ship thrice in one night while slightly tipsy on Ardees. There is knowledge a friendship does better without.

Instead, he falls quiet looking at Finn, who is staring at the grey walls of the Tantive IV, and somehow instinctively knows what’s on his mind. It is, after all, also the morning – or technically the afternoon – after Finn presumably had a conversation with Rey that Poe today failed to have, and with all the General duties to fulfil, they haven’t spoken a word about that yet.

Poe slides his hand over the table until it bumps Finn’s elbow. “By the way. Did you talk to Rey last night?”

Finn detaches his gaze from the Tantive IV to meet Poe’s eyes. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t elaborate, but almost jolts to his feet and straightens his jacket. “Want to walk while we talk about that?”

Poe gives the table an absentminded pat, for being a decent resting place or something the like. Then he stands up and climbs over the bench to join Finn’s side. “Sure. Lead the way.”

Finn does lead them out of the cave and away from the chattering people and into the woods, where the smell of rain isn’t covered up by motor oil and X-Wing exhaust fumes. Rain is heavy and can stick around for weeks on Ajan Kloss, so Poe hopes the humidity in the air will pass without turning into more, or that they will at least get another week or so to sort through the majority of aftermaths before it starts raining.

A properly built starship launches regardless of the weather, but besides the main operation systems in the cave and the quarters in the Tantive IV, the base was hurriedly erected under the open sky and Poe really doesn’t want to have to deal with having roofs built on top of everything else. He frowns at the beads of water that have formed on the leaves of some of the trees they walk past.

It takes only a few steps away from the tracks they’ve beaten down since they arrived on Ajan Kloss for the woods to swallow most of the noise from the base. Finn is leading the way, so Poe guesses it’s only fair that he starts the conversation.

“I tried to find her today,” he says. “Looked all around the base, but I have no idea where she went.”

“No wonder you don’t, you’re banned from where she is.” Finn attempts a smirk, but it doesn’t really hold. “She’s hiding in the Falcon.”

Poe groans. “Chewie’s overreacting.”

“You almost broke the thing, and that’s a damn skill seeing how broken it already is.”

“I didn’t break anything; it’s flying again!” Poe insists. “And even if, he could at least let me enter the damn piece of junk.”

“Told him so,” Finn says. “He said he doesn’t want to risk it.”

This isn’t leading anywhere, so Poe kicks a tree to let out the rest of his frustration and gets back to the point. “So you found Rey?”

Finn’s expression goes strangely bitter. “Depends on how you mean that. I haven’t actually seen her today. Chewie told me where she is.” He glowers at the treetops. “He said she doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Ouch,” Poe comments. Rey not wanting to talk isn’t anything new, but up until recently, her moments of isolation only very rarely extended to Finn. No wonder it gets to him so much.

He’s glaring anywhere but at Poe, jaw clenched tight and both hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Yeah, ouch,” he growls. “I don’t get it. This isn’t like her at all.”

“Isn’t it?” Poe says darkly.

Finn hesitates. He stops glaring when he meets Poe’s eyes, but the way the muscles in his face twitch doesn’t make him appear any less irritated. Poe raises his brows at him.

“Alright,” Finn says. “It’s like her. It’s been a lot like her recently, but I thought that was over.”

Poe would be the first to admit that he has a thing for Finn’s eyes, dark and intense as they are, but it’s the intensity of his joy and warmth he’s been initiating excessive amounts of eye contact for these past months, not the intense pain they’re full of now. It’s tough to handle seeing him like this, but Poe doesn’t break their gaze.

“Look, it’s only been a day,” he tries. “What she’s been through would take a toll on anyone.”

“I know.” Finn looks away, at some indistinct point between the trees. “I don’t blame her.”

That’s honestly slightly more than Poe manages, who has been feeling an unfortunately familiar itch under his skin since he tried and failed looking for Rey. He’s been trying to rationalise it for himself in the same way he’s trying to do for Finn, but he seems to be a lot more successful with the latter than with the former.

Still, blaming or not blaming Rey aside, Finn’s whole body is too tense and his steps on the jungle floor are too heavy for that to be the whole story.

Poe walks a little closer to him and throws an arm around Finn’s shoulders. “What did you talk about last night?”

“A lot.” Finn leans into the touch, the way he usually does. He’s still tense all over, but his shoulders sag a little. Jackpot. “Mostly about what happened on Exegol, and the Force and all that.” He shrugs, but it’s a careful shrug so not to shake off Poe’s arm. “Leia. Rey told me how she reached Kylo Ren on Kef Bir. She got everything Ren got, through their weird connection or whatever.”

Poe takes a moment to let that sink in. He hasn’t mentioned it to anyone yet and probably won’t, because it’s not fair to Leia’s memory and would go against everything she wanted, but a part of him wishes Kylo Ren had just died on Kef Bir before Leia had the chance to intervene. It’s not a topic he wants to broach right now, so he encourages Finn to keep talking.

“It makes sense,” Finn says. “I kind of felt her too, back there.”

Poe didn’t, and he doubts that it was because he was being a coward and hiding in the Falcon. “How is Rey dealing with that?” he asks.

“Badly?” Finn guesses. “Like we all are, I suppose.”

That is so empathically true that Poe holds onto him a little tighter. “She’s holding up Leia’s memory, at least. She was there for the diplomatic talks today, and Lando said she was a blast.”

“Yeah, I know. Lando told me.” Finn elbows Poe in the side, gently enough not to push him away. “You’re not the only one who went looking for her. I talked to him just before I found Chewie.”

“Sounds like you didn’t waste an hour on searching,” Poe mutters. “Did she say anything about doing diplomacy last night?”

“Nothing.” The bit of tension that disappeared from Finn’s features comes back full force. He stops in front of an ancient tree and looks up at it with a deep frown. “Whenever I tried to ask her what she’ll do now that it’s over, she didn’t want to talk about it. Just said that it isn’t really over yet and that she’ll be sticking around until it is.”

Poe watches him intently. He can’t tell if that’s all there is or not, because Finn is looking everywhere but at him, so he tries to put his arm to good use and applies light pressure to Finn’s shoulder, which does get him to start walking again.

Finn stares straight ahead at their outrageously green surroundings and the grey base structures that come into view behind the trees and says nothing. Poe drops his arm and lets Finn walk a few steps ahead, but he keeps his eyes on him and clears his throat.

“Did you tell her what you wanted to on Pasaana?” He can’t decide whether he wants to be tentative or teasing about it, so it comes out as a strange mixture that isn’t really anything.

Finn swallows heavily, but he doesn’t flinch, which is as much of a good sign as Poe is going to get right now. “No,” he says and lets out a quiet huff. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what she needs to hear right now.”

“I don’t know,” Poe says as casually as possible, which isn’t very casual at all. “I think you should tell her. Maybe it’ll make her feel better. And if it doesn’t, at least you’d get it off your chest.”

That makes Finn both stop in his tracks and throw a sceptical glance at Poe. “You don’t even know what it’s about.”

Poe pretends to be interested in a jungle flower for a second, then feels a little ridiculous about it and looks back up at Finn. “I've got a hunch.”

Finn’s face falls, which Poe tries not to be too hurt by. For a moment, they’re just looking at each other, possibly sizing each other up and trying to get on their wavelength where they know intuitively what the other is thinking. At least that’s what Poe’s doing.

Finally, Finn deflates. “I don’t know,” he admits. “It seemed like a good idea to tell her on Pasaana—”

“When we were all possibly dying, you mean,” Poe throws in and nods, signalling that he does, in fact, understand fully.

Finn lets the rest of his sentence trail off and starts anew. “Alright, maybe it wasn’t that thought-through on Pasaana, but it did seem like a good idea there for a while.” He stares up at the sky, where a single cumulus cloud has formed. “But now she’s got enough on her plate as it is.”

“She had way more on her plate when we were still at war,” Poe argues.

“Yeah, but she was talking to us properly then,” Finn fires back. “This is the last thing she needs to hear right now.”

Poe considers pointing out that Rey hasn’t talked to them properly in what amounts to forever, at least not about weird Force dyads and tangible hallucinations and a bunch of other Jedi stuff that would probably go over Poe’s head anyways. But that would be counterproductive, so he manages to keep his mouth shut for once.

“You’re the only one she’s talking to at all right now,” he says instead.

It doesn’t seem to convince Finn. Quite the opposite, he only seems to deflate more. Poe makes a step towards him, ready to provide him with touch or words or whatever he needs, but Finn straightens up again after a moment and says, “Not sure if she’s actually doing that.”

He finds Poe’s eyes again, and if eye contact is what gives him some comfort, then that’s what he’ll get.

“We talked about a lot of things last night,” Finn continues, “but not about what's actually on her mind. I know that. It was like holding two conversations at the same time, just that I couldn’t hear one of them because she didn't actually say any of that out loud.”

Poe raises his brows at him and attempts a lopsided grin. “Have you ever thought about getting that Force sensitivity checked out?”

That makes Finn’s eyes brighten and his lips twitch into an uncertain smile. His frown finally dissolves. If anything, he looks a little bashful. “I have, actually. You think I should?”

“Finn. Buddy.” Poe is so taken up in his success to make Finn stop frowning that he smiles at him far more brightly than is appropriate for the conversation they’ve just had. “I’ve never met anyone who could sense what others were doing unless they were Force sensitive.”

“It’s just Rey, though,” Finn objects. “I don’t think I’m getting much from anyone else.”

Poe walks up to him and boxes his upper arm. “You just said you could sense Leia, too.”

“Right, but anyone could’ve sensed Leia back there.” Finn finally takes a hand out of his pocket to shove Poe lightly in return. “And I didn’t get half as much as Rey did. Just a vague feeling.”

“I didn’t get anything from her,” Poe says, and Finn falls quiet. “Maybe that’s what you should talk to Rey about,” Poe continues. “I bet she’d be happy to know that she’s not the only Force sensitive person around.”

“Maybe,” Finn agrees hesitantly. He returns to his previous position by Poe’s side, and they continue down the little trail between the trees.

They’ve almost reached the base again. The entrance to the cave is so close Poe recognises the people standing around it. One of them is probably going to come up to them and rope them into another strategy meeting once they leave the woods.

Finn eyes the cave with consideration. There’s a smile on his face again, and it’s a little brighter than before. “Do you think I could be a Jedi?” he muses, and Poe has to laugh.

“Sure. Why not?”

He doesn’t even need to imagine Finn with a lightsaber; he’s used Rey’s often enough, which in retrospect should have been a hint.

“I didn’t even know there were still Jedi for a really long time,” Finn says. “I can’t imagine myself as one.”

He has stars in his eyes though, so it seems to be a thrilling thought, nonetheless. Poe pats his back.

“You’re a Resistance hero and a General already. Why not also a Jedi?”

“That seems like a bit much,” Finn argues.

Poe grins at him. If anyone deserves “a bit much”, it’s Finn. “Talk to Rey about it,” he advises. “Once she’s back to talking to us.”

They reach the cave then, and Poe stops to linger by the entrance before anyone at the command centre can catch sight of them. “Any particular reason you wanted to go back here?”

“Not really,” Finn says and frowns at the centre like he’s vaguely surprised it’s there. “But you did promise me another strategy meeting.”

He looks so smug all of a sudden that Poe has to roll his eyes, but the hour he asked for is well and truly over, and he can’t say he’s not itching to get back into an X-Wing and shoot at First Order ships knowing that he hasn’t got anything to lose. Time to solidify their plans to move out tomorrow morning, then.

“Right. Let’s get to it.” He takes Finn by the arm and pulls him along. They haven’t even reached the centre yet when two of the officers come up to join them, one with a lengthy report from the scouting teams about the area they are planning to tackle tomorrow and one with an overview of the ships and pilots on their squadron, and Poe lets himself be pulled back into the familiar buzz of wrapping up a war.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to find a balance between "Finn's upbringing was 99% brainwashing and that is still going to affect him and his social skills a year later" and "Finn is a smart and very capable adult person who adjusts to things very quickly"; bear with me.
> 
> I also have newfound respect for people who have an update schedule. This fic is done and I still didn't manage to update when I wanted to update.

The next morning, Poe fires a calculated series of shots at a fuel tank and listens to the comm in his helmet explode as a star destroyer goes up in flames. Everyone is calling everyone on the same frequency, barely anyone is using coherent words, and somewhere between all the laughter and cheers and whoops, Poe picks up the words, “That’s it! That was the last one!” and joins in the cacophony.

The official message of gratitude from the new Resistance-aligned Onderon government is drowned out by cheering pilots and since they’re using the same frequency as everyone else, BB-8 can’t single them out. So Poe only catches around five words of what they’re saying and shouts something in return in hopes that they hear him. It’s not like it matters either way. They’ll have some dreaded diplomatic calls soon enough.

Right now, he’s busy praising everyone on his squadron to the stars and back and flying unnecessary loops around pieces of star destroyer. He’s giddy with relief and victory. They all are.

Poe can’t remember the last time it was like this. They went in and out without issues, with no bad surprises waiting for them at their destination. With Onderon’s own forces fighting beside them, they had been stupidly overpowered, so it hadn’t taken half as long to take out the stronghold as Poe would have expected. They’ll be back on Ajan Kloss before lunch. They have no serious damages, no losses, no sacrifices. It’s a dream of a mission and Poe feels high on it.

He thinks he can pick out Zorii’s voice between all the cheering in his comm just before he gives the order to engage light speed and return to the base, her bright, unbridled laughter that he hasn’t heard in ages.

By the time they land on Ajan Kloss, Poe’s ears are ringing and his cheeks are strained and he isn’t even euphoric anymore – he’s hysteric. He half-leaps out of his X-Wing, as well as he can without breaking all his limbs, and throws his helmet into the grass. BB-8 is lowered onto the ground beside him and starts rolling in circles around first Poe and then the whole ship.

“Good work up there!” Poe calls to his droid and receives a series of excited beeps.

Then his arms are full of fellow pilots, both old friends and newly recruited allies, and he embraces all of them indiscriminately. He kisses Jessika on both cheeks while she laughs brightly and does it again and again until he’s pulled aside and into the arms of three of his old smuggling companions.

He had made an effort and talked to them the night before. It had taken nothing more to convince them to join this mission, and they hadn’t even beaten him up. Poe sees this as a full success.

Zorii is with them, lingering in the back until they let Poe go. She holds out a hand that Poe shakes with vigour and then uses to pull her into a hug.

“You madman,” she laughs. “Diving right into enemy fire. I don’t know how your X-Wing is still flying.”

“It gets fixed a lot.” Poe lets go of her and grins widely. “It’s barely a scratch.”

“You lost an engine.”

“And I had a spare one for emergencies, so I don’t see your point.” Poe turns around to search the faces of the people coming over from the base. He spots Jannah and Chewie, but no one else he’s looking for.

“The point of emergency engines is that you try not to use them,” Zorii says. “This is why we never let you fly when we had valuable cargo.”

“What can I say, I’m not made for smuggling!”

BB-8 overtakes them to roll ahead beeping, and Poe squeezes Zorii’s arm, leaves the rest of his squadron to it and follows.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

The droid twists around and tells Poe in no uncertain terms that this is classified information.

“Classified? You’re programmed to share everything classified with me and only me, so what are you on about?”

BB-8 beeps loudly, rolls around in a small circle in obvious distress, and finally settles on giving Poe puppy eyes. One puppy lens. Something the like; he hasn’t found a droid-appropriate term yet.

Poe kneels down to frown at him. “I’ve barely seen you around yesterday. You know who I also haven’t seen much?”

The low beep he gets in return isn’t exactly an answer, but it’s all the confirmation he needs. With a sigh, he pats BB-8 on the side and gets back on his feet.

“Alright. Go keep an eye on her, but tell me if she does anything stupid.” When BB-8 hesitates, he adds, “I won’t follow you. Promise.”

BB-8 thanks him with a long, enthusiastic beep and rolls off in the vague direction of the mechanics’ bay. Not to the Falcon then, which is parked not too far from where the squadron just landed. For a moment, Poe considers following after all. He needs to speak to Rose about the engine anyways, so he could pretend he hadn’t realised where BB-8 was going. But he promised, and he doesn’t feel like either lying to his droid or ratting him out to Rey. If she doesn’t want to talk, then that’s how things are.

Poe looks around for other familiar faces instead, or rather faces more familiar than everyone here has become over time. Jannah has disappeared in the crowd, but he finds Chewie talking to a bunch of old Resistance pilots.

“Chewie!” Poe calls out to him and repeats it thrice before Chewie hears him over all the victory-drunk chatter and raises his head in a question. “Have you seen Finn?” Poe shouts over the heads of a bunch of celebrating pilots.

Chewie shouts back, which for him is probably much easier than for Poe, that Finn is probably still in his quarters, and points in the appropriate direction.

Poe pauses in his victory cheer to furrow his brow. Finn got up with him today, just before the squadron left at dawn, and Poe doesn’t think he has so far spent a single hour more than necessary in their narrow quarters. But if Chewie says that’s where he is, he’s probably right.

“Thanks!” Poe calls back. “And we need to talk about the Falcon thing!”

Chewie tells him to fuck off. Poe decides not to get into any squabbles with a Wookiee today and uses the spring in his step to cross the base at twice his usual speed.

It’s busy now that plans are in motion and everyone has a task to fulfil or a mission to prepare. Poe basks in the congratulations he gets for Onderon and tries to look dignified when he nods at the people who salute and call him “General”. The sun is slowly creeping up to its zenith, and that they weren’t even gone for half a day in Ajan Kloss time makes Poe smile like an idiot.

Things don’t usually work out for them. This staggering amount of success takes some getting used to.

He jogs up the ramp into the Tantive IV and down the hallway to the Generals’ quarters whistling the old cantina tune that’s been stuck in his head since the victory party and waltzes into the room with so much pizzazz that he catches his shoulder on the lagging door and almost falls over his own feet.

Finn is sitting on his bed, hands folded between his knees, and stares up at him like he just broke through the wall with a star destroyer.

“Hey!” Poe greets him, still grinning widely as the abused door creaks shut behind him.

Finn almost jumps to his feet. “Fuck, you’re already back? How did it go?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer but pulls Poe into a brief hug. Poe makes it linger a bit longer, claps his back and laughs.

“Fantastic! You should’ve seen it. We took them out one by one, like clockwork.”

They break apart, and since there is not much space for two people standing and walking in this room, Finn drops back onto his bed, a sunlight smile on his face.

“Losses? Damages?” he asks.

“None,” Poe says. It comes out as giddy as he is about that. He holds out a hand to Finn and receives a well-deserved high five. “I lost an engine,” he remembers a moment later. “But I had a spare one.”

“Rose is going to kill you one of these days,” Finn remarks, but it’s light-hearted, so Poe takes it as a compliment.

“The Resistance still needs its best pilot,” he says. “I’m safe until I’m expendable.”

He falls down on his bed for a moment to pull off his gloves, undo his boots and throw all of that to the floor. “What are you doing in here?” he asks with a brief glance at Finn.

Finn grimaces. “I’m avoiding Rose.”

Poe stops in his motion to unlatch his vest. “In your own quarters?” He makes a descriptive gesture at the rest of the room. “Chewie knows where you are; he told me where to find you.”

The vest finally budges, and Poe stands back up to pull it off. The pilots’ suit comes with a ridiculous number of belts, but years of experience have taught him which of these actually need to be undone. He starts on the first one.

“Yeah,” Finn says, “but if I’m out of the way, she’s not gonna look for me.”

Poe rids himself of the last belt and fumbles for the zipper while he gives Finn a questioning look.

“Rose is with Rey,” Finn explains. There’s a bitter tinge in his voice all of a sudden. “Who is avoiding us.”

Poe’s hand on the zipper stills. The adrenalin in his blood fizzles out, leaving him with a strangely high heart rate, a damper on his mood, and a frown.

“Fuck, she is, right?”

He catches Finn’s eyes, just to make sure that he feels the same about Rey suddenly talking to Rose but not to either of them. Finn’s jaw is clenched, and his eyes are dark, and Poe takes this as a yes.

“I haven’t seen her all morning,” Finn says. “And I’ve tried."

“No luck here either. I think BB-8 is with her.” Poe shakes off the strange feeling that is threatening to creep all over his body and undoes the zipper instead. “Why are you avoiding Rose, anyways?”

That makes Finn look even more uncomfortable but a little less bitter. “Because I have no reason to avoid her anymore.”

Poe steps out of the suit and up to his tiny chest of belongings to find a proper shirt he can wear with his flying trousers. He throws a look back at Finn. “Why are you doing it then?”

Finn groans and stares up at the ceiling. “She pretty much confessed to me on Crait, remember?”

“Yup.” Poe catches sight of something grey and familiar and pulls it out of the chest. He throws it onto the bed and pulls off his thin flying shirt. “And?”

“I mean, she’s a great person and a great friend, but I don’t really feel the same way about her.” Finn wrings his hands a bit. “Before we won, I had a reason not to talk to her about that, what with everything going on, but now it’s getting awkward.”

“Finn,” Poe says intently. He takes a break from staring at him to pull the shirt over his head and then sits down on his bed to bring them face to face. “Finn, talk to her.”

“Really?” Finn asks, like it’s an incredibly daring suggestion. “She’s my friend. I don’t want to hurt her.”

His fingers restlessly pull on the hem of his sleeve. From under his closely knit-together brows, he gives Poe a sheepish look.

Poe takes a deep breath. “Alright. I’ll be completely honest with you.” He raises his hand in a half-hearted mock-up of an oath. “You’re probably hurting her more right now than you would if you just told her.”

Finn’s eyes widen a little. “Really? Oh, fuck.”

Poe nods. “It’ll just get worse if you don’t talk to her. At this point, she probably knows what’s up anyways. It’s been a while since she confessed to you, everyone kinda knew, you didn’t bring it up again. Rose isn’t oblivious, and that’s a pretty clear sign.”

The pained groan Finn lets out at that is excruciating to listen to, but some things need to be said.

“If you put it like that, it makes sense,” Finn grumbles. He searches for Poe’s eyes, and Poe tries to give him an encouraging smile.

“Hey, just go up to her and apologise. She probably thinks she made it weird by confessing.”

That obviously only makes Finn wince. Poe mentally claps himself on the back for this extraordinary display of empathy.

“She didn’t.” Finn swallows and glances at the floor. “It’s not her fault. What she did was really brave.”

“I know,” Poe sighs. He reaches out across the room until his fingers brush Finn’s leg and gives him two light pats on the knee. “Tell her that and you’re good.”

“Alright.” When Finn looks up again, his lips are pressed together and there’s new resolve in his eyes. “And she won’t just never talk to me again?”

“Definitely not. That’s usually not how that works.” Otherwise, Poe would have at least three friends less. There’s something about being a hotshot pilot and looking like he does that seems to make up for certain parts of his personality. It’s probably a good thing that he usually isn’t half as easy as he currently is.

“Good,” Finn says, visibly relieved but still tense as a bow. He throws his head back and directs a distraught look at the ceiling. “I have no idea how these things work,” he complains. “This isn’t really something you’re taught in the First Order!”

Poe thinks about how he is currently playing the part of the proverbial right X-Wing engine calling the left one black and grimaces. “I don’t think that’s something you get taught anywhere.”

He makes it sound consoling, which is evidently appreciated, because Finn meets his eyes again. “How do people do this?”

“Practice,” Poe guesses and shrugs. “Doesn’t take you all the way there either, though.”

“Great,” Finn huffs. “Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this normal life thing.”

“It’s not a normal life until you’ve been awkward over at least one person,” Poe promises.

It’s way more effective than he’d thought it would be. Finn relaxes, the muscles around his neck and shoulders going slack, and he mirrors Poe’s smile. Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget where he was only a year ago, like the kind-eyed stormtrooper who’d rescued Poe above Jakku had already been the man he is today.

Resistance fucking General. The euphoria of the first successful mission post-victory must still have been lurking in the back of Poe’s mind, because it comes crashing back full force as he looks at Finn and feels warm all over. He’s never been this proud of anyone before.

He lightly kicks Finn’s shin, though that’s entirely unnecessary with Finn’s attention already on him in the form of a sceptical but amused quirk of an eyebrow as a response to Poe’s suddenly beaming smile.

“Speaking of. We’re doing a recap of the mission in a couple of minutes. Guess who’s gonna be there?”

Finn sighs. “Rose.”

“Rose!” Poe grins and swiftly stands up. He holds one hand out to Finn. “She has to fix my engine.”

“You just want me to talk to her now so she doesn’t skewer you for breaking your ship all the time,” Finn says, but he takes Poe’s hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet.

“Maybe,” Poe says brightly and puts a hand on Finn’s back to steer him towards the door. “But you have to talk to her, so it’s a win-win.”

Finn gives the door a gloomy look as it opens with a light creak. “Say that again after she strangled me.”

“Think about it like that,” Poe says, stepping out into the hallway. “Would you strangle someone for that?”

“If you’re talking about Rey,” Finn replies, which, okay, is one way to interpret that, “I’m getting close.”

But his voice holds no trace of the malice that implies.

-

The meeting is over quickly and mostly consists of recapitulation of what went well (everything), several rounds of congratulations to everyone involved, and the periodical repetition of the notion that if everything keeps going as smoothly as this mission, they’ll be looking at a First-Order-free galaxy in a few months’ time.

Finn taps Rose’s shoulder as soon as they officially declare the meeting to be over, and the two of them leave the command centre in the direction of the mechanics’ bay, talking intently. When Finn throws one look back over his shoulder, Poe gives him a thumbs-up.

The attack plan for the next mission tomorrow is hovering in front of him in holographic green, but Poe takes the time to watch Finn and Rose leave and asks himself if he’d be jealous of Rose in the way he isn’t of Rey, if it were her Finn was in love with. He comes up with nothing but the muted sense of impending dread that surges every time he thinks about this general topic for too long, and that one is a Poe problem, not a Rose or a Rey problem.

Maybe it would be the most rational solution to sort himself out and just tell Finn, instead of waiting for Rey to end her sulk. It certainly would be the least hypocritical one. But the rational decisions usually aren’t what wins him battles.

He concentrates on the hologram instead, which is a lot less complicated and makes his heart pump low waves of adrenalin through his body. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a lean figure hovering by his shoulder.

“Thoughts?” he asks her without turning around.

“None yet,” Zorii answers. “I’ve only seen it briefly.”

She takes a step towards the hologram, joining Poe’s side. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest and her hair is loose, falling over her shoulders. It’s strange to see her so casually dressed outside of her own rooms. On Kijimi, she had almost never taken off her suit and helmet. But then, Kijimi had been one of those places where merely rounding a corner could have gotten you into a gang fight.

Zorii studies the hologram with alert eyes, but the furrow between her brows deepens the longer she looks at it. “Looks complicated,” she comments.

Poe looks it over again. “Not really,” he decides. “If you’re used to them.”

“That might take a while for me.” Zorii looks at him with some kind of quiet fascination. Poe takes the chance to let the hologram be a hologram and look at her instead.

Her eyes are red again. At this point, he’d be asking her about allergies if he didn’t know better. But everything else about her is neatly in place, so there is no excuse to ask about anything substantial.

“How did it go with Jannah yesterday?” he asks instead.

Zorii counters his meaningfully raised eyebrows with a thin smile. “I think she might be a promising pilot,” she says, which tells Poe exactly nothing of interest.

Knowing her, it’s not even innuendo. Poe resigns himself to never hearing anything about that story again, despite all the wingmanning, unless Jannah and Zorii due to some miraculous twist of fate end up married.

Just as well. Living vicariously through other people’s sex lives is a bad idea if you know all involved parties.

“What about you?” Zorii asks. Her eyes flicker over to where Finn and Rose disappeared, but it’s so brief and meaningless that it was probably unintentional. “Holding up?”

Poe thinks about the star destroyer he set on fire this morning and grins. “Peachy.” He loses the smile again when he looks into Zorii’s eyes and at all the red there. “You?” he asks, trying not to sound too hesitant.

“Holding up,” Zorii answers. “I was going to make you and Finn follow me to lunch, but it looks like it’s just you.”

“I’d love to, but I need to go over this before the prep meeting.” Poe gestures at the hologram, then drops his hand on Zorii’s shoulder to give it an apologetic squeeze. “But you can join me for mission planning.”

He holds his grin back until the initial bewilderment in Zorii’s eyes has made way to fond exasperation.

“No way.” She brushes Poe’s hand off her shoulder. “We only just got back. We deserve an hour of free time.” With a glance at the hologram, she adds, “We’ll look at it enough later.”

“You will,” Poe corrects. “I’m the squadron leader. I need to have an agenda set up.”

His eyes drift back to the hologram. He can’t say that preparation is his favourite part of flying missions – there’s way too little actual flying involved for that – but it feels good, almost like a bit of leisure, to be back in his comfort zone. He’s done mission prep since he made Commander. It’s in his blood by now, the whole ordeal from deciphering the strategy maps to building concrete, individual action plans out of them. He doesn’t think he can still look at a military map without mentally moving X-Wings around.

This has nothing to do with keeping a whole Resistance running or making galaxy-changing decisions over the strategy table or not verbally attacking intergalactic envoys although they really deserve it. This is second nature. This is what he’s made for.

Zorii doesn’t seem too convinced by his plans to keep working, but she doesn’t argue. “I’ll see you later,” she says. “Good luck with your maps.”

She turns to leave, but Poe stops her before she can get out of the command centre.

“Wait a moment.” He stalls her with a raised palm while he orders his own thoughts and tries to find out what he wants from her. It takes a moment, but then the skin on his shoulders starts prickling uncomfortably and he says, “Have you seen Rey around today?”

Zorii frowns briefly. “Only in passing. She was with the little mechanic, I think. I didn’t talk to her much; just said hi.” Her eyes narrow at Poe. “Why are you asking?”

“Nevermind,” Poe sighs. He doesn’t know what he expected. Rey and Zorii barely know each other, and now he isn’t sure if he’s glad Rey isn’t avoiding everyone or pissed that no one else is getting the cold shoulder treatment.

Zorii’s eyes are piercing under the most casual circumstances, stunningly green as they are, but right now, she’s scanning him like a radar, registering everything that might give away what he’s thinking.

Finally, she frowns and says, “I’ll see you in an hour, then.” 

Once upon a time, she would have made him tell her more. Or maybe she wouldn’t have and left him to it, if she had already been able to guess what was on his mind. It’s hard to predict with her.

Poe finds that he’s glad she didn’t ask today.

“Make sure your crew gets here too,” he tells her. “I know what they’re like with appointments.”

Zorii quirks up an eyebrow. “You’re one to talk.”

The trace of bitterness is still there, and Poe doubts it will disappear anytime soon, but it’s already overshadowed by her old light teasing. She smiles when she heads off. Poe waits until she’s out of the command centre and then turns back to the hologram. There’s a battle to prepare.

He broods over the mission plan for a while, until Jessika joins him and they brood together. When their prep meeting for the mission starts an hour later, they haven’t moved much but already went over as many details as possible.

Out of the pilots they’ll be flying with tomorrow, Suralinda and Karé arrive first. Karé’s cheeks are shining too much not to be wet and her eyes are swollen, like she had been crying only minutes earlier. Suralinda cracks a dry joke about the Black Squadron never catching a break that no one laughs about, but they do slip back into their accustomed dynamic like nothing happened, reviewing plans and discussing the ships on their fleet instead of acknowledging the depressing atmosphere that has settled over them. Alone with them, the holes the ones they lost left in their middle are impossible to overlook, so they all breathe out in relief when their allies join them and bring a wave of victory cheer.

They’re a ragtag bunch, most of whom under normal circumstances would never have worked together or even met. Zorii stands next to Jessika during the meeting, and seeing them together alone gives Poe a sort of whiplash he usually knows from flying at lightspeed in a new ship for the first time.

There is the rest of the Kijimi crew, all of them with bitter determination on their faces while they discuss how to best take out a brand-new star destroyer. There are the kids from Chandrila, all three about as old as Poe was when he started flying for the New Republic, ages ago, and equally as enthusiastic. There are two racing pilots from Corellia, a retired law enforcer from Coruscant, an assorted mix of traders and smugglers from all over the Outer Rim.

On all accounts, they shouldn’t work together as well as they do, but Poe watched them take out a fleet of TIE fighters in tandem today and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to seeing it again tomorrow.

They are all so immersed in coming up with formations and possible minor attack strategies that they only notice the clouds that have shaped outside when the first drops start falling and the first people come hurried into the cave to avoid the rain. Poe disbands the meeting with a quick order and a lengthy string of curse words.

He spends the next hours hurrying back and forth through the base while the rain quickly turns into a steady patter. Improvised roofs are erected over what cannot be moved, screens and equipment are carried into the cave, doors are closed against the rain and laundry is quickly removed from the clotheslines stretched between the parked spaceships.

It’s not their first rain on Ajan Kloss, but the preparations take a while nonetheless, and by the time everything is safe and dry, Poe is soaked to the bone and the sun is going down somewhere behind the clouds.

He hurries back to his quarters as soon as he can and throws his soaked clothing onto the bed. He has just changed into mostly dry clothes and a proper jacket and is on his way out of the Tantive IV when he remembers that he hasn’t checked on the nets of sensors keeping the First Order’s attention away from the fleet.

They’ve kept them around for now, because despite all the relief, actual trust in their victory is still low and the security mechanisms are ultimately useless but provide an effective sense of comfort. It probably wouldn’t matter much if the sensors malfunctioned now. The First Order remnants would have to regroup before they could act, and even then, destroying a tiny, makeshift base on Ajan Kloss probably wouldn’t be their first objective.

But the sensors are there, so they might just as well keep working, and Poe has no idea how they deal with the rain. Leia had probably been aware of that, just like she’d been aware of everything that went on around the base. She could have run this operation by herself.

Poe can’t, so he finds one of the mechanics in the crowd huddled together in the packed cave and asks her. She throws back that it’s probably fine, as long as the wind that came with the water hasn’t dislodged anything. So Poe curses and heads out to check, declining her offer to go herself.

He’s halfway soaked before he even gets to the ships, no matter how hard he tries to sprint from shelter to shelter. When he gets there, he finds the sensor net perfectly undisturbed and its main engine and control panel covered with sheet metal. He tries to be happy about that instead of cursing himself for coming here completely unnecessarily. Then he stops trying when the rain picks up and turns from its previous patter into a steady, heavy pour.

He is running down the path back to the cave with his jacket over his head when he hears hurried footsteps on the wet ground behind him and Finn’s voice calling his name.

Poe stops, despite the rain, to let Finn catch up, and turns around already smiling. Finn is at his shoulder moments later – evading First Order forces all the time is excellent running practice – grabs Poe’s upper arm and pulls him along.

“Keep running, you idiot!”

“You held me up!” Poe complains but doesn’t have to be told twice. At least the rain is warm, so the water isn’t sucking the heat out of his body.

“Keep running when you see me running!” Finn shouts over the patter of the rain on the thin metal roofs they put up all around the base. “I thought we had that one down!”

“I’m not exactly expecting Kylo Ren to round the corner right now!” Poe shouts back, and then the rain stops as they slip into the first proper building they reach. It’s not the central cave. That’s still a stretch away from here, just far enough for them to end up dripping all over the Tantive IV once they get back there.

This here is the shack they built two months ago in a desperate attempt to move some things around and de-clutter the cave. It hadn’t really worked, but at least the spare X-Wing parts, unused uniforms, broken equipment kept to salvage parts if necessary, and stacks of rations are stored here now instead of right next to the main command facilities.

Finn lets go of Poe’s arm and leans against a pile of metal boxes by the door. Poe discovers another box labelled “Helmets” on the other side of the door and flops down on it.

“Break?” he asks and pulls the jacket off his head.

“Break,” Finn agrees. He peers out of the door. “Do you have anywhere to be?”

“Nope. Just got back from checking on the sensor nets.”

Finn frowns at him. “I did that half an hour ago.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. Then they start grinning, mirror images of each other, both holding back laughter.

“We need to communicate better,” Poe states and shakes his head in disbelief. That makes some of the water caught in his hair drop onto his face and he decides not to do that again while he wipes it off. “Now I got wet for nothing. What were you doing out there, anyways?”

“Getting back from the mechanics’ bay.” Finn attempts to shake some water out of his short coils. “I helped Rose out with the waterproofing.”

“Oh?” Poe raises his eyebrows. “How did it go with Rose, then?”

“Really well.” Finn’s smile widens again. “She told me off for not telling her earlier, but she said I’m forgiven.”

Poe waits until Finn is done getting rid of most of the water dripping off him and remains merely soaked, not leaving puddles on the floor. As soon as Finn’s eyes are on him again, Poe raises his brows further and gives him a smug grin.

“Who told you so?”

It takes Finn less than a second to catch up, drop his smile and groan. “No. I’m not doing this.”

“Come on. Who told you so?”

Finn looks pained. “You,” he forces out.

“Me,” Poe agrees. “Glad she didn’t strangle you.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Finn says, voice dry and dripping with sarcasm.

Poe smiles very stupidly at him. “Hey, I hope you do. Seems like I got you in the clear with her. What were you still doing at the mechanics’ bay when it started raining?”

Finn’s entire demeanour shifts. The playful sarcasm disappears from his features and his smile fades, but he looks determined rather than alarmed. His eyes are lit up and captivating. It’s ridiculously attractive.

He’s wearing a leather bomber jacket that he looks positively edible in, and that triples the effect he is having on Poe right now. It’s not the jacket Poe had let him keep after he’d rescued it from Jakku; that one had been lost somewhere along the line. But Finn had been far more distraught about that loss than a piece of clothing deserved, and Poe, who had guessed that his grief had been less about the jacket itself than about the fact that it had been the first thing Finn had ever owned, had gifted him a replacement. He had carefully scouted his closet for the piece that would suit Finn best, because he’d been naïve and more interested in seeing Finn in nice things than in not digging his own grave.

It’s not so much the change of ownership that gets him about this jacket. Finn didn’t exactly join the Resistance with a well-stocked wardrobe in tow, and since they have the same size, he’s mostly been wearing Poe’s clothes anyways. Finn just looks unbelievably good in it. The contrast between the light auburn of the leather and his dark skin is really doing things for him.

He takes a step forward and Poe automatically budges up to create more space on the box. Finn accepts the offer and takes a seat.

He’s tense and radiating energy, both hands raised in a half-gesture. “I was just going to look for you. We need to talk about that.”

“Right.” Poe gives him an encouraging nod. “Listening.”

“It’s Jannah’s idea,” Finn prefaces, and for a moment, he smiles again around her name. His eyes are gleaming, and he puts a hand on Poe’s knee, squeezing it tightly. “What if we can get through to the troops? If we have to take them out anyways, we might also just recruit them ourselves.”

A big frown forms on Poe’s forehead. His eyes are glued to Finn’s, taking in every word he says and turning it over. “You mean we could get them to desert?”

“I don’t think it would work with a lot of them,” Finn admits. “They’ve been drilled to be loyal and they believe in it. But most of them were just kids abducted by the First Order, like Jannah and me. They never knew anything else. If we can get them to believe there’s an alternative—”

“—we can start a mutiny,” Poe finishes seamlessly. He’s matching Finn’s enthusiasm now. If they could pull that off, they wouldn’t only have to fight against less troops but gain people themselves, not to mention save lives like Finn’s and Jannah’s and those of her company.

He grips Finn’s wrist, the one attached to the hand Finn is resting on Poe’s knee. “Is there a way to get through to them?”

“That’s what we were talking to Rose about. They all get their orders on the same frequency. If we can hack into that, we should be able to send a message before we go in with the squadron.”

Poe’s mind fills in the blanks – the strategy map of the operation at hand, their fleet and their action plans, which he quickly amends to allow for contacting the troops and picking up rebelling First Order soldiers instead of going in and taking out everyone.

“Can we do that?” he asks, staring at Finn.

The corners of Finn’s mouth twitch, like he’s itching to smile but is too deep into the strategy talk to let go and do it. “Rose says yes. She’ll need some time, but she can probably put us through.”

Poe’s eyes go wide. He switches from holding Finn’s wrist to gripping his shoulder. “That could work,” he says intently.

Finn pats his knee. “I know. I never would’ve thought it could before. I thought I was the only one. But if it worked for Jannah’s whole company, it could work for others, too.”

He’s so thrilled his voice is almost vibrating with it. There is no guarantee that this idea will prove as effective as it could be in a best-case scenario, if it works at all and Rose manages to get them a connection, but looking at Finn, taking in how much hope he already puts into this plan, Poe can’t help but give in to a rush of warmth and so much pride he barely knows how to contain it.

He beams. Finally, Finn smiles back. "I still don't think we'd manage to make many of them change sides," he says, and doubtlessly there’s something else on the tip of his tongue that warrants the slightly defiant tone in his voice, but Poe cuts him off before he can continue.

"But it's worth a try. Every person we convince is a life saved and an advantage for us."

Finn’s smile widens at that. He bumps Poe’s shoulder. They’re still holding eye contact and it feels electric.

“Right. Then we’ll work on that.”

“You need anyone else on the team?” Poe asks, already filing through everyone who’s ever worked on communications for them.

“Not yet, but I’ll get back to you about that,” Finn says. “The plan is that Jannah, Rose and I see what we can do.”

Poe grins, nods, and nudges Finn’s side. “Do you need me to have your back with the General duties for a while?” he offers.

Finn looks at him like he just offered to fly into a sun, but in a fond way. “No, work on the ground is lagging anyways. You go on and keep flying missions.”

That’s a bit of a relief; Poe has enough on his mind as it is. “Right on,” he says. “We’re doing this.”

“Hell yes, we are.”

They grin at each other, and Finn’s smile has the luminosity of a thousand suns, beaming with light and buoyancy that Poe enviously notes Finn still has, after everything that happened to them in general and him in particular. For the past months, Poe’s been feeling like he might sleep for a week after all this is over. Finn looks like he’ll go off and travel the whole galaxy.

Poe tries to bask in his smile and soak up a bit of his energy, and right now, it feels like it’s working. He’s buzzing with the warmth of a plan well planned, duties well fulfilled, and the heat Finn gives off through the wet leather jacket.

“Did Rose say anything about my engine?” he asks casually.

“Yeah.” Finn’s eyes sparkle mischievously. “She’ll kill you as soon as she gets the chance.”

Poe shoves him. “Liar.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Poe laughs when Finn shrugs and says, “Believe me or not, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He pulls Finn a little closer, trying to gather more warmth. He’s still soaked, and that’s starting to make even the warm Ajan Kloss night feel chilly. “Anything she actually said?” he asks, expecting nothing.

And just like that, Finn’s face falls. He’s still warm, so Poe stays right where he is, pressed to his side, and Finn doesn’t take his hand off Poe’s knee either, but his smile is gone and his eyes lose their gleam, suddenly looking rather tired.

“I asked her about Rey,” he says, because of course that’s what this is about.

Poe wonders briefly when Rey had become a topic that makes them feel worse instead of fuel their mutual love for her. Thinking about it, he can’t tell if it happened before or after Exegol.

“Did Rey talk to her about anything?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Finn says, so bitterly it makes both of them wince. “Rose isn’t telling me anything, though. Said Rey’s thinking about things and that she needs time.”

Poe clenches his jaw. It’s not like they hadn’t guessed that already. “Anything about why she isn’t talking to us?”

Finn sighs. “Not really. Rose said she tried to make her change her mind, but you know Rey.”

Stubborn as a bantha and prone to listening to no one. Poe nods grimly. “Yeah, I know.”

Finn finally takes his hand off Poe’s knee, leaving a rapidly cooling spot of wet fabric. He folds his hands between his knees and looks up at the ugly shack ceiling. Poe pulls him closer still, because he needs to keep their amount of body contact and he thinks Finn might need the comfort, and he’s a big fan of win-wins.

“This is ridiculous,” Finn says eventually. He doesn’t sound angry, just hurt and disappointed. “After everything we went through together – after we won the damn war! – and she still doesn’t even look at us.”

Poe doesn’t know what to say about that that wouldn’t make things worse, so he settles on lightly running his hand over the leather fabric on Finn’s shoulder.

“Are you picking up on anything from her?” he asks.

Finn furrows his brow and stares at the pile of boxes across from them. He does this for a few long moments, and Poe watches him intently as soon as he figures out that he’s probably doing a Force thing right now.

“Not a whole lot,” Finn concludes. “Mostly a lot of confusion. I don’t think she knows herself what she’s thinking.”

Poe makes a noncommittal noise. “Could you get more if you tried?”

“Probably.” Finn looks up at him. “But I’m not going to do that.”

“Right. Good call.” Poe pats his shoulder and swallows. Tapping into a Force connection to read someone’s mind would probably count as a serious invasion of privacy, and for reasons he doesn’t like to contemplate too often, this is something Poe feels kind of strongly about. From what they’ve heard so far about the thing Rey and Kylo Ren had going on, that’s the very last thing Rey needs.

Finn turns to stare at the boxes again. “I don’t want to find out what she’s thinking by doing anything with the Force,” he says. “I want her to tell us what’s going on.”

He sounds like he had sounded on Kef Bir, when Poe had picked him and Jannah off the wreck of the Death Star and Finn had told him what he’d just seen, and that Rey had already left.

It’s been like this for a while now, Rey going ahead with her Jedi training and her visions and the issues she never told anyone about, and the two of them on the ground, watching her go where they can’t follow.

“I thought she just needed space,” Finn continues, “but she’s apparently talking to Rose and Lando, so it’s just us.”

“She talks to Zorii too,” Poe adds quietly. “Not a lot, but at least she isn’t avoiding her.”

Finn groans loudly and buries his face in one hand. “Fuck this,” he proclaims when he’s stopped rubbing his eyes red. “Fuck this so much. You can’t even win a war in peace!”

The wording is so inappropriately silly that Poe snorts despite himself. “Hey, we’ll get there,” he promises and pats Finn’s shoulder some more. “If she’s still not talking to us in a week, we’re sneaking up to her alcove in the middle of the night.”

Finn’s back under Poe’s arm starts shaking with laughter. “Sounds like a plan.” He takes a deep breath, stifling his laughter, and lets it out in an exhausted sigh. “I just want Rey back.”

His voice is quiet and more broken than Poe’s heard him in months. It’s only natural. He’s been powering through like they’ve all been powering through, and that neither of them is Leia and has her outstanding knack for running things means that neither of them has really gotten the chance to catch a breath yet. But there’s also so much longing in everything Finn is doing right now, from the way he clutches his hands to the dull look in his eyes to the way he says Rey’s name like a prayer.

“Me too,” Poe says and swallows. He waits a few moments, and when Finn looks up to meet his eyes again, he adds, “You know, I still think you should tell her. When she’s done sulking.”

Finn frowns at him. It almost looks suspicious, but there’s a worried edge to it. “I’ll see how she’s doing by then. If she ever looks at me again.”

“Hey now.” Poe shoves him. “Don’t go all despondent on me. She’ll come around, and then you’ll tell her you love her, and I’ll be your best man when you get married on Coruscant.”

That makes Finn snort, but it’s not the cheerful kind that Poe had been hoping for. “Yeah,” Finn grumbles. “Or I could just never tell her at all so she doesn’t go right back to not talking to me. I’m fine with being a coward if it keeps her around.”

That stings. Not that Poe is expecting Finn to never talk to him again in the case of certain events – he seems to have done alright with Rose today – but he still kind of feels like a coward.

“I’ve seen you two together,” he says. “I doubt she’ll stop talking to you.”

Finally, Finn looks up with a bit of hope in his eyes. It fizzles out as soon as he catches Poe’s gaze, and Poe for a second wonders if he’s looking at him weirdly, but Finn just asks, “You think?”

“Yup. Even if she says no, you’re way too important to her.” And he doesn’t think she would say no, though that’s not his call to make. Thinking about it, a bit of warmth returns to his veins and he gives Finn a genuine smile. The hurt he had felt on Pasaana, when it had first come up, has numbed and turned into a dull undercurrent of all that warmth.

He's not jealous of Rey. He doesn't think he could hold any grudge against her for a very long time, even though she gets on his nerves just as much as she makes him want to hug her and never let her go. He's not even sad about Rey. He's happy that Finn found her, and he's happy that Rey has someone like Finn by her side, and he's sad for himself. That’s all.

Finn looks at him, watching his smile. Then he turns away and for a moment looks even more lost than before. “Okay, I’ll tell her. But not if I don’t think she’d be fine with hearing it.”

That’s fair enough, so Poe decides to let it rest for now and just holds onto him for a while.

He thinks about telling him. Not right now, but sometime soon, because he doesn’t know how long he’s supposed to wait for Rey to get a grip on her life. Then, he thinks about telling him right now, because if Finn does talk to Rey and Rey says yes, Poe is never going to confess to anything, and in the end, that’d just be the easy way out.

Finn shifts, straightens up and looks at Poe. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll stop being on a downer in a week or so.”

Poe laughs. “Still the most fun person around.”

“Really? I’m up against Artoo and BB-8.” Finn is grinning now. He glances out of the door, almost cautiously, like he’s expecting the whole place to be flooded. It’s not; if anything, the rain has calmed down again. “Are you done for the day?”

“As far as I know.” The mission today is recapped, the mission tomorrow is prepared, and if Rose doesn’t manage to fix his ship in time, Poe will be able to borrow one. He needs to get up to speed with the diplomatic side of affairs, but he might actually go mad if he starts spending his evening hours on that. So he elbows Finn and asks, “You?”

“Done.” 

Finn gets up from the box and stretches, which is something he should do more often when wearing this jacket. The side of Poe’s arm that a moment ago had been resting against Finn’s back is suddenly cool and damp instead of warm and equally damp, and Poe blindly feels for his own jacket. He finds it on the ground. It must have slid down at some point during their conversation, dislodged by all that body contact. He slips it on. It’s uncomfortably wet.

When he turns back around, Finn is holding out a hand to him. “Ready to run back?”

Poe half-groans. “No, but I don’t have a choice.”

He takes the offered hand and pulls himself up. It’s warm, and Finn doesn’t seem to have any intention of letting go, because he half-pulls Poe to the door and frowns at the lights of the cave entrance halfway across the base.

He’s probably sizing up the rain and preparing to make a neat and very fast beeline back to the cave. Poe doesn’t even know how heavy the rain still is because he’s looking at Finn.

Maybe nothing he has to say is what Finn needs to hear now, with everything else going on, but Finn deserves honesty more than anything. So, fuck it. Time to be brave.

He tugs on Finn’s hand, getting his attention. “Hey. Wait a minute.” His chest feels tight, but he pushes on. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

Finn raises an eyebrow at him. Then, his eyes widen, and he looks at Poe with that weary kind of terror everyone in the Resistance has on their face at least once a day. “No,” he groans. “Don’t tell me something went wrong.”

“What?” Poe draws his brows together and shakes his head. “No, that’s not it. Nothing’s wrong. I’m not doing General talk here.”

Finn’s expression immediately clears up and he squeezes Poe’s hand. “Good!” he says. “I’m not doing more strategy talk tonight. What do you want to say?”

Poe holds their eye contact and concentrates on the way Finn looks at him, open and warm, so that he doesn’t think too hard about the fact that he just committed to doing this in a utility shack. But there isn’t a lot of privacy at a military base, and he’s not broaching any such topic in their room, where he doesn’t have the option to subtly disappear to knock on Jessika’s door and ask her if he can kip at hers for the night in case things go awry.

He holds onto Finn’s hand. “Listen, Finn, I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, and I’m not expecting anything here. So, whatever you think of this – no pressure, buddy.”

Poe grimaces as soon as the last syllable is spoken. Brilliant time to call him “buddy”. He’s already nailing it.

Finn just narrows his eyes in suspicion. “Alright?” he says hesitantly.

Poe tries to give him a reassuring smile, to convey that it’s nothing to worry about, but he fears it turns out kind of wonky. He takes a breath, looks at Finn, and his mind comes up blank.

He raises the hand that is not currently holding Finn’s and holds up the index finger. “Gimme a moment.”

Finn does so, though his brows draw closer together and he’s looking more baffled by the second.

Poe takes a long look at the ceiling and brings his thoughts in a vaguely coherent order. He should have planned this better, but now he’s in for an inch, in for a mile. He lets out a deep breath and finds Finn’s eyes again. “Okay.”

Finn stares at him in confusion but gives him an encouraging nod.

Poe holds his hand tighter. “Look. You’re my best friend. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone I clicked with as much as I click with you. It’s like—”he snaps his fingers twice”—and you get it. It’s like nothing else.”

Finn doesn’t look like he’s getting much of anything right now, but that’ll come in time. Poe is smiling now, probably looking even more obviously smitten than he usually allows himself to look, not because he’s trying to, but because he means every word of what he’s saying and that makes him near-euphoric.

“You’re one of the bravest, strongest and kindest people I’ve ever met,” he continues, underlining every superlative with another squeeze of his hand. “I’m really fucking glad I got to meet you.”

He’s slipping into rambling territory, and that wasn’t the plan, especially not with the understanding slowly dawning on Finn’s face. So he pushes his free hand into his pocket, shrugs, and cuts himself short.

“Long story short is, I love you.”

Finn gapes at him, dark eyes blown wide. He might actually break Poe’s fingers if he gripped them any tighter. “Fuck,” he says and lets out a breath through his teeth. “Did you practise that?”

“Not a word,” Poe says truthfully.

“Fuck,” Finn repeats, with feeling. He shifts his weight around on his legs, still staring at Poe with an intensity that seems to be willing Poe to just read what he’s trying to say when he starts on the first syllable of a word thrice and doesn’t finish any of them, all the while looking like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin.

Finally, he looks at the ceiling instead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says under his breath, pulling on Poe’s hand with so much force that Poe reckons he might be experiencing the last moments of his hand being attached to his wrist.

It’s alright by him. Luke had a metal hand and flew X-Wings with it just fine.

Poe tugs back and gives Finn a lopsided smile. “Hey, like I said, no pressure. I just wanted you to know. I know how you feel about—”

Finn cuts him off before he can say another word. “No! That’s not what I mean! I love you too!”

He meets Poe’s eyes again around the same moment Poe loses control of his facial muscles.

He makes a feeble attempt to find some words, but his brain short-circuited and he’s not sure he’s thinking at all. So instead, he uses their clasped hands to pull Finn close and wrap his arms around him. They’re both rain-soaked and it’s sort of clammy, but Finn is warm and responds in kind, and then they’re just holding each other tighter and tighter, turning the embrace into a bone-crushing hug.

Poe is vaguely aware he’s breathing harder than usual. He’s got a hand on the spot where Finn’s neck meets the back of his head, pulling him in, and his face pressed to the side of Finn’s cheek, just breathing and smelling rainwater.

Finn’s hands are clenched in his jacket, and then one of them comes up to Poe’s shoulder and pushes lightly while his other arm holds onto him. Poe tips his head back and they’re forehead to forehead, looking at each other.

It’s something. Poe doesn’t know what, just that it’s good. He runs his fingers through the soft hair on the back of Finn’s neck.

Finn’s hand wanders from Poe’s shoulder to his neck and up. Finn watches it move, swallows, and looks into Poe’s eyes. “Can I?” he asks breathlessly.

Poe’s brain is getting laser-fried and he is enjoying every second of it. “Fuck,” he swears. “Please.”

So Finn kisses him. Very, very gently at first, almost hesitantly for maybe one and a half seconds, until Poe loses the rest of his impulse control. He cups the back of Finn’s head, fingers in his damp hair, and presses closer, teeth against Finn’s lips and short, hot breaths between them, and he kisses him back as deeply as he can.

It’s messy – it’s incredibly messy; neither of them manages any kind of coordination, so it’s a jumble of teeth and tongues and lips. Poe hasn’t had a kiss this messy in years, but he doesn’t care, because he’s kissing Finn in the Resistance base equivalent to a broom closet and he feels sixteen again.

They’re pressed chest to chest and lips to lips and nose to cheek for a gloriously long while, both holding each other so tightly it almost aches and both tasting of rain. They don’t manage to really break apart. Whenever they inevitably do, they just find each other again. Technically, it’s five or six kisses. Poe stops counting after number three, so it’s a rough estimate.

He’s on fucking fire. He wants to push this wonderful jacket off Finn’s wonderful shoulders and kiss marks all over his torso. But more than that, he wants to keep standing here and hold him, and that’s the better idea anyways. So he ends kiss number five or six open-mouthed and presses another lighter, gentler one to Finn’s lips. Finn pulls him in again, and they keep kissing lightly for a while, too.

Poe wouldn’t mind continuing this for an hour or two, but Finn draws back the tiniest bit eventually and presses their foreheads together. He’s wide-eyed again. Poe traces his jawline with the tips of his fingers. He can feel Finn’s heartbeat through his shirt and it’s racing.

Finn is running his hands over Poe’s back restlessly. His eyes are restless too, roaming all over Poe’s face. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, he looks a little lost. Poe cocks his head ever so slightly, just enough to get the question across.

Finn swallows thickly. “Quarters?”

Poe’s eyes go very, very wide. “Wow, okay. You’re quick.”

“What?” It takes two seconds of Finn looking really confused, then his hands on Poe’s back freeze and he rapidly adds, “No, shit, not that! We have to talk about this!”

Oh shit. Right. Rey.

A very selfish part of Poe that has grown tenfold since it last reared its head wants to ask Finn to talk later and just keep kissing him until he forgets about talking altogether. But he couldn’t do that, neither to Finn nor to Rey.

So he says, “Yeah. Right. We probably should.”

He does steal another kiss, just a brief one, because he’s apparently still allowed to do that and Finn responds so enthusiastically that Poe lets go of him hoping that this maybe wasn’t the last time they did that.

He exits the embrace and finds himself inside a very ugly utility shack, with rain drumming against the thin metal roof. With all the being pressed against Finn’s chest he’s been doing, the temperature shift under his wet shirt is a little more immense than would be appropriate for this climate. If his lips weren’t still tingling, figuratively and, probably on account of being kiss-swollen, literally, he’d start feeling slightly icky now.

“Yes to the quarters thing,” he says and wrinkles his nose. “Would be great to talk about this somewhere that has dry clothes.”

Finn gives him a softer version of the look he uses when he wants Poe to stop whining. “If you’re up to run.”

“Ready,” Poe promises. “I just want to get out of this thing.”

Finn gives him a meaningful look out of the corner of his eyes. “Yeah, I have no idea why you did this here.”

Poe doesn’t exactly want to say, “Because I didn’t expect you to start snogging me like there’s no tomorrow and I wanted to avoid an awkward and frustratingly non-sexual walk of shame from our room to Jessika’s,” so he just shrugs.

“Bad idea, I know.”

Finn breaks into a smile that’s almost sunshine again. “Yeah, it was.”

He looks a little dazed, which Poe takes as a good sign for his own kissing skills. But the grab he makes for Poe’s hand is determined, and he’s beaming when he says, “Alright. Run.”

Poe gets one more shared wide grin in before they sprint out of the shack and into the pouring rain, hand in hand. All the water is making it difficult to hold onto Finn’s increasingly slippery hand, but they just grip each other tighter, and Poe feels very thoroughly made out with, and it’s all just a little ridiculous. They start laughing halfway to the cave, when Finn pulls his jacket off mid-run and they hold it over both their heads, and don’t stop until they reach the entrance.

As soon as it’s within sight, Finn throws the Tantive IV a look and asks, “Inside?”

Poe nods, and they continue in that direction with a spring in their steps.

The cave is, as expected, crowded with people sitting around at their makeshift tables or on the floor and filling the whole space up with chatter. They both scan the crowd as they walk past it. Poe does so with a small lump in the back of his throat, but Rey is nowhere to be seen. He does spot Jannah and Rose, who are sitting together in a circle made up of mechanics and ex-stormtroopers and appear to be deep in conversation, and Jessika, who catches sight of them and waves.

Poe waves back with his free hand and out of the corner of his eye sees Finn do the same.

They haven’t let go of each other’s hands, and they don’t until they reach the Tantive IV. It’s nothing out of the ordinary; everyone in the Resistance has seen them walk around holding hands at least once. But usually, it’s a light tangle of fingers, casual and comfortable, not the tight squeeze they have going on now that allows Poe to feel Finn’s heartbeat through the veins in his hand.

No one holds them up with any organisational inquiries. A few people brush past them, giving them the respectful nods they’re entitled to now, even when they look like they fell headfirst into a lake, but they make it to the Tantive IV undisturbed. It’s a small miracle, but one Poe is willing to take.

The door to their room creaks open, and they finally drop each other’s hands. Finn walks in first and stops in the middle of the room, looking around. Poe plays with the thought of walking up to him and kissing the nape of his neck, because he’s wanted to do that a lot over the past months, but he’s pretty sure that wouldn’t be a good idea.

He shuts the door behind them. Finn looks at him and swallows. He seems so out of his depth that Poe walks up to him after all, boxes his shoulder as he brushes past him and flashes him a smile. That earns him a quiet laugh and gets marked down as a full success.

“With you in a second,” Poe promises and kneels down by his chest of belongings. “I need to stop dripping water everywhere before I talk about anything.”

He is, indeed, dripping water everywhere. It’s in small puddles on the floor and currently dripping off Poe’s jacket, the hem of his trousers, and the strands of his hair that aren’t plastered to his forehead. He’s sure he looks very attractive right now.

Finn drapes his jacket over the edge of his bed, where it continues dripping steadily. Then he pulls on the hem of his soaked shirt and grimaces. “Do you have something for me, too?”

“Sure.” Poe owns exactly three towels, two of which are clean and one of which he now throws at Finn’s head.

Finn catches it out of the air and begins towelling his hair. “Thanks.”

Rummaging through the chest, Poe resolves to make a trip to some place that sells actual clothing as soon as he has enough free hours to get off Ajan Kloss for something other than a mission. Most of his clothes are either threadbare, uniforms, or threadbare uniforms.

He finds one shirt that belongs in none of these categories and tosses it at Finn. “Think fast.”

Finn, who is currently drying his face, almost drops the towel in his attempt to catch the shirt. He manages to grip it by the sleeve and gives Poe a challenging look. “Anything else you want to throw at me?”

“Nope, you’re safe,” Poe decides with another look at the shrinking pile of clothes. Changing trousers is probably a bit much right now. Shirts are fine – he’s watched Finn undress so often by now that it barely registers with him anymore as anything but a common if appreciated sight – but he doesn’t have to push his luck.

He pulls something wearable and another towel out of the pile and throws them onto his bed. Finn is sitting on his own bed and is currently working out the sleeve situation of the shirt Poe gave him. His rain-soaked shirt is a pile next to him on the bed, and Poe is thinking entirely too much about kneeling in front of him and nipping on his collarbone.

Vivid though the newly added relevance makes it, it’s no thought he hasn’t had before, so he pushes it back and settles on his own bed.

“So,” he begins once they’re both wearing dry shirts and he’s moved on to rubbing his hair dry. “Where do we start?”

Finn stares at the floor in front of Poe’s boots like it killed his family. “I don’t even know. I have no idea how any of this works and it’s all so fucking complicated.”

He folds his hands between his knees, leans forward and eyes Poe’s shoes like a strategy map. He has the same concentrated frown on his face that is usually followed by an eye-opening remark in a meeting, only that he now also looks like he’s dreading every bit of this conversation. “You know about Rey,” he begins.

Poe grits his teeth and rolls his shoulders to get the tension out of his muscles. This whole thing with Rey stings, but that’s nothing new. He concentrates on the leftover warmth on his lips instead.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. Finn glances up at him and looks absolutely miserable, which is so disproportionate to what is actually going on that Poe decides to set the record straight right away. “I’m not mad at you for making out with me although you like her, if that’s what you think.” He attempts a smile. “I take what I get.”

“You—” Finn stares at him incredulously. “Wait, you _what_?”

He meets Poe’s eyes, which he had so far avoided since they entered the room, and straightens up a bit to bring them eye to eye. There’s a lot of tension in his arms and his eyes and his hands, which are on his knees now, and he looks not just miserable but miserable and pretty upset.

Poe makes a vague gesture that doesn’t help to explain anything but gives him something to do with his hands. “I liked kissing you. So what if you’re in love with Rey. It’s not like you’re cheating on her.”

That doesn’t serve to make anything better. Rather, Finn’s frown deepens in shock and he shakes his head, mouthing a few silent syllables before he finds any actual words.

“You,” he says, a little too loudly, “have really low standards!”

Poe shrugs, because he can’t really argue with that. “My standards are Zorii,” he offers as means of explanation.

Finn keeps staring at him. “Yeah, you need to do something about that,” he decides. “What the fuck do you mean, you take what you get?”

“Look, I’m really easy right now,” Poe admits. “I went up to Zorii after the victory party and asked her if we could get the benefits back into our friendship.”

“Right!” Finn exclaims and stares at the wall, like staring at Poe is too much to handle. “Okay!”

“Yeah, dumb idea! I know that!” Poe cuts in. “But I’m up to fuck a woman I haven’t seen in a decade, so obviously I’m gonna be all over it if it’s you kissing me! I know you love Rey; I don’t care.”

That sounds a bit harsh, so he frantically tries to come up with some words to amend that, but Finn restores their eye contact and interrupts him before he can say anything.

“Have you completely missed the part where I said I’m also in love with you?”

Poe blinks at him. “No,” he says, because that part had set him on fire almost more than the kissing had, and now that Finn repeats it, and so casually at that, like it’s a universal, unquestionable truth, Poe feels hot down to his fingertips.

“Just so you know, I am.” Finn swallows again and lowers his voice. “I really am. Do you see the problem?”

Poe considers that for a moment. If he’s honest with himself, he had expected something along the lines of Finn loving both of them but loving Rey more, and that glorious make-out session thus having been a one-time thing. But he’s not so sure if that’s where Finn is going with this.

“Maybe,” he concludes. “Fill me in.”

“Okay.” Finn wrings his hands, then holds his open palms out to Poe like he’s trying to hand him everything that’s on his mind. “I love Rey. I think I’ve kinda loved her since I met her, but that’s really hard to figure out if you’ve got no actual point of reference. So I don’t know how long it’s been like this. But being around her is like being around the sun.”

His voice breaks around the edges, his determination going soft to match all the gentleness in his eyes. Maybe he’s going exactly where Poe thought he’d be going, after all.

“She’s… Everything light and everything good is so much brighter when I’m around her, and…” He trails off and wrings his hands again. “She’s a lot.”

Poe takes a deep breath and holds it for a few seconds, biting his tongue. “Finn. Tell her that.”

“But I can’t, right?” The determined spark that had mellowed out into tenderness is back full force. “Because there’s you and I also love you. Just like I shouldn’t go around kissing you because I love Rey.”

Poe reaches out across the room and pats his knee, twice. “It’s alright, promise.” He looks at Finn with what he hopes is understanding and resists the urge to massage his temples. “I’ve been around you two for a while now, and let me tell you, it’s exactly as much as you think it is. You two are made for each other.”

To his slight disappointment, Finn doesn’t seem to be reassured by that at all. He regards Poe with his jaw clenched. “Are you listening to yourself?” he asks. “I mean it when I say that I love you.”

There’s a certain dichotomy between his almost reproachful tone and the words he’s actually saying, and Finn seems to notice that as soon as Poe does. He smooths his expression over, and there’s that gentleness again, paired with a little more intensity than before.

“Poe. You’re a big deal.”

That goes straight to Poe’s heart, making it clench like it was pierced through, and he really, really is too old for this kind of whiplash.

“But Rey was the one you were going to tell on Pasaana,” he snaps. “Not me.”

It’s childish. He feels like a kid throwing a temper tantrum, even more so when Finn looks like he just got struck with something hard and heavy, but damn if he doesn’t also feel like he just released half the pressure he’s been carrying around in his ribcage for months.

“Yes, alright, I didn’t think about it!” Finn straightens up, a heavy scowl on his face. He’s taking deep, levelled breaths. “I’ve been thinking about telling her for a while and I couldn’t—” He swallows. “I couldn’t let her go without her knowing.”

That hurts too, so Poe resolves to just sit through this, lest he say something he doesn’t mean and mess this up even more.

“I thought telling her would be a good idea for a while. I’m not so sure there anymore.” Finn grits his teeth. “You know how she’s been since she got back from Ahch-To. I thought that if I told her and she said yes, then maybe she’d stick around instead of going off and doing her Jedi thing or whatever it was that she wasn’t telling us anything about.”

His hands are clenched to fists, and Poe doesn’t point out that he himself had only met Rey on Crait and that he’d never known her before she started keeping all the important things close to her heart and away from everyone else, except for maybe Leia.

“Wouldn’t have worked either way,” Finn adds bitterly. “It’s not like she’s talking to us now.”

Poe sighs. “That’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, I know.” Finn’s look at him is pleading and almost gentle again. “I’ve never been as afraid of losing you as I am of losing her. It’s like no matter what happens, you’re still gonna be there. While Rey just…”

“Flies off in First Order ships and leaves us on Kef Bir?” Poe suggests.

“That,” Finn agrees. One of his hands comes up to run through his hair, which is a bit longer than it had been when Poe had first met him. Finn had been thrilled about it when he had first started growing it out, because the First Order had regulated hair length.

“I watched her leave on Kef Bir,” he says, sounding broken. “I saw her board that fucking ship and, you know, that kind of made me realise that I couldn’t have held her back anyways.”

“Fuck,” Poe breathes. He doesn’t like to think too hard about Kef Bir, because there’s a pit of guilt in his stomach that opens up every time the topic comes up. “I never should have let you go after her alone.”

“You didn’t even realise I’d actually gone until way later,” Finn argues, mustering him without a trace of accusation. “And Jannah was there.”

“Yeah, but I was a coward on Kef Bir,” Poe insists. “I should’ve stuck around instead of leaving you to deal with that.” He inches his foot forward to lightly bump Finn’s ankle with the tip of his boot. “I’m sorry about that.”

Finn nods, briefly but with intent. Apology heard and accepted, and just like that, the pit of guilt shrinks in size.

“But that’s exactly what I mean.” Finn makes that gesture with his hands again, both palms turned up. “Even on Kef Bir, I never once doubted that you’d come back.”

Poe reaches out, takes one of those upturned palms and squeezes. “Never had to.”

Finn looks at their hands for a moment. Then, he moves his other hand to join them, so that Poe’s hand is now cupped between both of Finn’s. It creates a bit of an awkward situation, because Poe isn’t in the most comfortable position with how far he has to lean forward to maintain that skin contact, but he’d rather be tossed into a sarlacc pit than draw back his hand.

He decides to take pity on his own back and stands up instead. His hand slips free, but he puts it right back to where it was once he’s sat down next to Finn on his bed, interlacing their fingers. Finn holds his hand tighter between both of his own.

“So,” Poe begins. He props his other arm up on his knee and his chin on his fist. “What’s the takeaway here?”

“No idea,” Finn says. He briefly glances at Poe, but that doesn’t last, and he goes back to staring at the opposite wall. “I don’t want to just never do that again,” he admits, and by the tension in his shoulders, it’s pretty obvious what he means. “You’re right, we click together like nothing else. We’re like machinery; it’s brilliant.”

He smiles when he says that, and Poe smiles with him.

“I really, really love you,” Finn adds, slightly desperately looking down at their hands. “But—”

“—Rey,” Poe finishes for him.

Finn throws him a sheepish glance. “Yeah. But Rey. I have to talk to her before I make up my mind about any of this.”

There’s a slight ache at the back of Poe’s throat at that again, but it’s nothing compared to earlier, or, Force forbid, to Pasaana. He runs his thumb over the back of Finn’s right hand. “Alright. Tell me when you’re done.”

“You’re fine with that?” Finn asks, and Poe nods and lightly knocks their knees together.

“Sure. We can’t leave her out of this, whatever it is.” He musters Finn, who looks very relieved, and his eyes drift to his lips. He swallows and tries to concentrate on something else. “So no more kissing until then.”

“Probably for the better,” Finn says, though he doesn’t sound thrilled about that at all.

He meets Poe’s eyes, and there’s something that speaks volumes in that, and he is still holding Poe’s hand, and their knees are still touching.

Poe feels like doing something stupid again. He clears his throat. “You mind if—” He gestures in the direction of Finn’s face. “Just one more?”

“Fuck.” Finn lets out a very heavy breath. “Yes.”

Poe leans forward, hand still clutching Finn’s, and kisses him. Finn makes a very nice, very quiet noise under his lips, and Poe has to restrain himself from pushing his hand into Finn’s fresh shirt and his tongue into his mouth. It’s entirely enough that he can’t pull away, even though this is nothing like the breathless kisses they had earlier but a chaste if firm slide of lips against lips, and that Finn is kissing him back slowly and carefully and makes absolutely no move to put an end to this either.

Eventually, Poe’s free hand finds its way to Finn’s knee and his thumb starts rubbing circles on the lowest point of his thigh.

He makes a note of the warmth of this, of the give of Finn’s soft lips under his, and of how tightly Finn is holding his hand. Then he makes an immense effort and forces himself to pull away.

Finn’s eyes blink open. He looks utterly heartbroken, but he presses his lips together and accepts his fate.

Poe doesn’t. Poe leans forward again and kisses the soft skin between Finn’s ear and his cheek, and only then manages to fully lean back and say, “Okay. Thanks.”

It’s an objectively fucking awful thing to say and he has no idea how his fried brain came to the conclusion that these words could be allowed to exit his mouth, but it makes Finn snort and smile and that makes up for Poe’s urge to bash his own head against the metal wall.

Watching Finn laugh is always a delight, but now it’s accompanied by a warm, tingling feeling that eradicates most of the tension their conversation left. He’s gorgeous. He’s sunlight. This wonderful man is actually in love with Poe. That’ll have to get him over not getting to kiss him again, possibly ever, and honestly, the odds of that succeeding could be looking worse. He’s gotten over things with way less to hold onto.

He tugs on Finn’s hand and raises a brow. “Any other plans for the night?”

Finn grins at him. “No, got everything cleared off the to-do list.”

Poe grins back with the same enthusiasm. “Really? Was making out with me on there?”

That earns him another bright laugh and Finn, for lack of free hands, shoves him with his leg instead. “I’m not telling you that.”

“I can be pretty convincing.” Poe puts on his best dashing smile and leans over to bump into Finn’s side.

“I’ll remind you of that the next time we’re interrogating a hostage,” Finn counters, entirely unimpressed.

“Hey, we won,” Poe reminds him. “No more hostages.”

“Right. Still takes some getting used to.” Finn twists his right hand free from Poe’s grip, only to immediately replace it with his left one, and drapes his arm around Poe’s shoulders.

He’s very warm, and Poe is still grappling with the fact that he got to kiss him and somehow did something so incredibly right that Finn loves him.

“I think I’ll just go to sleep,” Finn decides after a moment of just sitting there. “After I find some dry trousers.”

“Great plan,” Poe agrees, but neither of them stirs. After another moment, Poe rests his head on Finn’s shoulder.

“Give me five minutes,” Finn says eventually. It ends up being just a little more than that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to burn-out city, population: Poe Dameron.
> 
> Things briefly go just a little darker in this chapter. It's mostly canon-typical space war things, but if suicide or mental breakdowns are tough topics for you, check the end notes for specific content warnings.

Poe does not wake Finn with a kiss the next morning, and he does not kiss him as a good-luck charm before they leave their room and get to work, and he does not drag him to the nearest flat, vertical surface to press him against it after Finn introduces the plan that he, Rose and Jannah hatched to their strategy team with an amount of enthusiasm that makes him radiant. Poe thinks about doing all of these things a little harder than usual, but he resists. He’s good at resisting; he’s been doing it for years, and compared to the First Order, his own thoughts are no match for him.

They both check in with Lando about the progress of the diplomatic meetings, and both flee the scene after Lando drops some very heavy hints that the Generals should start participating in those same meetings sooner rather than later.

“I’d love to,” Finn mutters, walking away from Lando’s way too knowing and way too amused eyes, “but I was already bad at military etiquette in the First Order. I’ll end up giving some exiled New Republic senator a half-hearted Sith salute.”

“Can’t help you there,” Poe answers and pats Finn’s back mournfully. “Leia specifically told me to stay away from diplomacy once.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Yeah.” Poe makes a face. “But it’s fair.”

After that, Finn heads off to work on Operation White Flag, as they have affectionately named it, and Poe grabs a small datapad with the mission plans for the day and some obligatory late breakfast, and buries himself in mission prep.

One hour later, he’s gone over the plans thrice and is still poking at the food. He’s at the point where he would kill for koyo fruit, something he had considered himself to be wholly sick of for the rest of his life after spending half his childhood in groves of it. He just doesn’t see what the point of setting up base on a jungle moon is supposed to be if no one ever goes looking for anything edible on the trees.

Well, no one but Rey, who has an almost childlike fascination with both fruit and trees, if said child had been half-starved on inflatable food portions on a desert planet. But Rey is out of commission, and no one else seems to care enough that the food sucks to do anything against it.

Poe checks the time. Two hours left until they are off to take any and all frustrations out on the First Order, and he still has to inspect the material support for their fleet their new intergalactic allies sent them. It feels great to be sponsored by someone again and not have to bonding tape damaged X-Wing parts together, but it also involves an exhausting amount of handshaking.

He buries his face in his hands and rubs his eyes, seeing stars. He’s tired, that’s all. He just has to blast some TIE fighters and spend another ten minutes thinking about the fact that Finn loves him. The latter thought already makes him feel around a ton lighter and smile into his palms.

A minute or so after he’s dropped his hands and gone back to gulping down food for nutrition’s sake alone, there’s a tap on his shoulder and Rose sits down next to him on the bench.

“I have some news,” she says, skipping the pleasantries. “Are you busy?”

Poe lights up. “Never not busy. But that can wait. Anything about my ship?”

Rose presses her lips together in a very exasperated line. She leaves him hanging for a moment, most likely on purpose, before she says, “Yes. It’s all fixed and ready for action.”

And there’s the rest of the weight lifted with momentum. Poe beams at Rose and gives her shoulder a grateful squeeze. “Great! You’re fantastic, Rose.”

That makes her smile, although she looks like she’s trying not to, and her cheeks fill with patches of colour. She keeps her voice stern, though. “I wouldn’t have to fix it that often if you didn’t break it that much. This is exactly why Chewie banned you from the Falcon.”

Poe pushes the halfway edible food away. He can try to eat that later; he’s running on fervour and bickering now. “Chewie’s overreacting. I can fly the Falcon just fine.”

“No, he’s not,” Rose insists. “You actually almost managed to break it for good, and that’s saying something, considering for how long the thing was owned by Han Solo.”

“Hey, what am I supposed to do when I’m getting shot at by TIE fighters?”

“At least try not to lose any engines?” Rose suggests. “That wouldn’t happen as much if you didn’t immediately go for the front lines, no matter what you’re up against.”

“Someone has to do it,” Poe argues.

Rose levels a glare at him. “And I’m sure there are a lot of other people who would if you let them.”

“But none of them would do it as well and live to tell the tale.”

He’s right and he knows it, so he pairs a cocked eyebrow with a smug grin and tries not to laugh when Rose sighs heavily.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re insufferable when you’re on an ego trip?”

Poe grins some more. “Not since I made General.”

Rose pinches his upper arm for that, hard enough to hurt. “Insufferable!”

He fails to contain his laughter any longer, and that must at least partially sweep Rose’s own restraints away, because she visibly bites her lip so she doesn’t laugh out loud. It’s good to see her cut loose a bit. The only time Poe has seen her truly carefree in the past year had been during the victory party, when she had been just as high on success as the rest of them and decidedly tipsy.

Though since then, he hasn’t seen her much at all outside of meetings, which is something that should be mended. He shuts the datapad off and gives her his full attention. “How are you holding up, anyways? Any plans in the making, besides the obvious?”

Rose’s brows go up a bit. “Ask me that when I get time to breathe between meetings and fixing your ship all the time.”

Poe lightly boxes her arm. “Sorry. I’ll try to put in more evading manoeuvres, how about that?”

“I’d appreciate that.” She smiles, but it’s controlled again, and Poe briefly mourns that he missed his chance to truly make her laugh. The thought gets shoved to the back of his mind to be revisited in due time when Rose’s lip curls into a stern twist. “That’s not the only thing I wanted to talk to you about. I talked to Rey.”

Poe straightens up. “I know. Finn told me.”

Rose’s frown deepens at Finn’s name, but she doesn’t comment on it. Poe props his chin up on his hand and gets ready for the next conversation he doesn’t really want to have.

“Did she tell you anything?”

Rose nods. “She has a lot on her mind.”

Like the rest of them don’t. Poe raises a brow. “Anything about why she isn’t talking to Finn and me?”

There’s a bit too much obvious hurt beneath the temper in his voice, and Rose’s look makes it clear that she notices. When she’s worried, every muscle in her face is tense and she almost looks upset, maybe at whatever happened that has her worrying about someone in the first place. Poe really doesn’t want her to worry about him. She’s too good at seeing through people, and that’s making him slightly uncomfortable.

But Rose doesn’t bring up anything to warrant that. All her calm but worried words are about Rey. “I think it’s hard for her to talk to people sometimes,” she says. “She grew up on Jakku; I imagine there weren’t a lot of other sentient beings around she could talk to.”

A cold, seeping weight settles on Poe’s shoulder, like someone placed a wet towel there. He swallows and stares at the cave wall, trying to sort through what makes him feel guilty and what makes him want to slap Rey around the head. He doesn’t get far.

“She’s mostly been around BB-8 and D-O,” Rose continues. There’s a trace of fond amusement in her voice now, and when Poe turns around, she has a light smile on her lips. “She said she hasn’t talked much to anyone else since Exegol. It’s just easier with the droids.”

Fantastic. So as soon as the war is over, Rey only talks to droids and Poe starts propositioning his ex-fuckbuddy because he’s so desperate he’d probably fuck a tree if it asked nicely. They’re the heroes of the Resistance, right there. Finn has great taste.

“Any idea why she’s talking to you?” Poe asks and regrets it almost immediately.

But Rose doesn’t seem perturbed by how rude that was and merely answers, “She asked me if I had something to do for her, so I let her help with fixing the ship I was working on. Then we just started talking.”

Mechanics and droids. Poe is sensing a pattern and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t like it. He runs a hand through his hair and offers Rose an apologetic look.

“Sorry for asking like that.” She nods, looking a little surprised, and he goes on to add, “Glad she’s talking to someone, but I wouldn’t mind an explanation for why I haven’t seen her in days.”

“That’s exactly why I’m here.” Rose glances around, like she’s worried someone might overhear them. It’s a useless thing to do. They’re at a very small base with only one main building, and there are always at least three people around who could eavesdrop if they wanted to.

But Rose seems determined about this, because she leans a little closer, too. “I think you should talk to her.”

Poe clenches his jaw and lifts his brows. “Yeah, I would if she let me, but she’s been hanging out with my droid instead.”

Rose glares at him for a bit, but her heart isn’t really in it. “I know. But I think it would be good for her to tell you some of the things she told me.”

“Rose. Look.” Poe places both of his hands between them on the table and looks straight into her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to her, but if Rey decides to grace us with her presence again, it shouldn’t be me she talks to first. She has to talk to Finn, and you know that.”

To his surprise, Rose shakes her head lightly. It makes Poe’s stomach drop.

“She can’t talk to Finn about this.”

“Oh, really?” The seeping cold on his shoulders and in his guts turns into annoyance. “Why not? He’s been trying to get through to her since Exegol. He at least deserves an explanation.”

“There is one,” Rose answers without flinching.

“Then tell me what it is, and I’ll see if I change my mind.”

He holds her gaze steadily, but Rose is just as good at staring at people defiantly as he is, so they end up at a stalemate.

“I promised Rey not to tell anyone what she told me,” she says.

Poe huffs and looks away. Fuck. He can’t even win a staring duel these days. “Right,” he mutters. “No one tell Poe anything.”

Rose pinches him again, which is significantly bolder now that it’s less in good fun and makes Poe feel like a ten-year-old. “I’m not going to break my promise,” she warns. “But it’s a complicated situation. And you know about Finn and Rey.”

Poe searches her eyes again. There’s an ever-so-slight trace of sadness in them, which he only picks up on because he knows it intimately. Rose blinks and it’s gone. Poe swallows hard.

“Yeah, I do.” He slides his datapad an inch closer and innocently glances at the blank screen. “Did she say anything about that?”

“Not really.”

Poe tries not to look disappointed, which Rose fortunately doesn’t pick up on. She folds her arms on the table and smiles less sadly than he would have expected.

“But you’ve seen them together,” she says. “It’s hard to miss.”

“I know.” Poe runs his fingers over the datapad, thinking about how Finn’s skin feels under them, and then about Finn and Rey and how they light up rooms when they laugh together, and how sensing their love for each other doesn’t take any Force sensitivity at all.

He has no idea what he’s been feeling about this whole thing since parameters changed. He’s fairly sure he doesn’t want to examine it too closely.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks Rose.

“More than you’d think,” she answers, looking weary. “Rey didn’t say anything, but I think it plays a role. It would probably be better for her to talk to someone who’s a little more removed from that whole thing.”

And somehow, that hurts more than anything else has these past days.

“Okay. Right. That’s me,” Poe says bitterly. His hands are twitching. He can’t wait to get them on his X-Wing’s controls and blow a bunch of TIE fighters to smithereens. “What about you? At least she’s talking to you at all.”

“I’m not the right person to do that.” Rose sighs, and the worried tension on her face is back. Her brows twist until there’s a thin line between them. “I did what I could, but you know Rey a lot better than I do. I don’t know if I can really get to the point with her, and I don’t think I’ve gotten all of it out of her either. She needs someone she’s close to.”

“You just said I was removed from all that,” Poe retorts.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Rose says simply, in a voice that kind of reminds him of Leia when she’d absolutely had it with Poe’s bullshit. The tone is gone again almost immediately, and she adds gently, “You’re her best friend, except for Finn. If there’s anyone she’ll tell everything to, it’s you.”

Poe deflates entirely. All the tension goes out of his body, leaving him limp. Somehow, he had never considered that what still sometimes feels like getting over a rocky start to him – despite all the love he has for Rey – might be one of the closest relationships Rey’s ever had.

“Alright.” He rubs his eyes. “I promise I’ll try, but she’s gotta play along. I’ve already wasted an hour searching the whole base for her with no luck.”

“When?” Rose asks, but she mercifully doesn’t make him answer. “I don’t think she’d avoid you if you tried looking for her now.”

Poe glares at a point above Rose’s shoulder while he tries to figure out if that means Rey is doing better or worse. He finds that the question alone makes his skin itch and straightens up again. “I’ll go look for her once I’m back with the squadron.”

“Good.” Rose looks incredibly relieved. There’s even a bit of a smile on her lips again, and now that the melancholy is gone from her eyes, she looks a little sheepish. “But don’t tell Rey I sent you. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Poe raises a hand in a mock oath. “Mouth’s shut.”

That seems to convince Rose of his intentions at least, though the light quirk of her brow makes it obvious what she thinks about Poe’s ability to keep his mouth shut. Poe can’t blame her. It’s entirely enough for him that she doesn’t voice her concerns.

“Oh, and,” she adds instead, sounding and looking smaller. She glances at her own hands on the table and fidgets with her fingers. “Maybe don’t tell Finn either.”

“Not until I’ve talked to Rey,” Poe agrees. He hates keeping things from Finn, but he hates seeing him hurt more. He’d understand, of course, but Poe still isn’t sure if he could look him in the eyes and tell him that out of the two of them, it won’t be Finn who gets to talk to Rey.

Rose smiles at him. “Thank you. I hope Rey won’t want to have my head for this.”

Poe puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got your back if she does.”

“Thanks. I’m sure we’ll be a match for a Jedi.”

“We blew up a Sith fleet, we can deal with a girl with a lightsaber.”

It’s finally enough to make her laugh a bit, just as she puts her hands flat on the table and pushes herself to her feet. “I’ll get back to you about that.”

“Do,” Poe says with an encouraging gesture, because a part of him still wants to take Rey by the collar and hold her up until she gets to her senses. He tries to shake that particular sentiment off by dragging a hand down his face and focusing his thoughts. He leans back and looks up at Rose. “I’m doing inventory for the new supplies in a minute. You want to join? I could use a mechanic’s eye.”

Rose nods. “Sure. I wanted to have a look at them anyways. Meet you there in ten?”

Poe glances at the food he still has to force himself to eat and wonders if he’ll be any more successful at that if he has a deadline. “Sounds good to me.”

“Alright.” Rose weasels out of the space between bench and table. Just before she heads off, she turns around again, with an almost unnoticeable enervated frown on her face. “And could you tell Babu Frik that I’m not going to take orders on how to fix spaceships from a black-market droid smith? He’s been on my nerves since we got back.”

She seems genuinely upset, but the image is so good that Poe barks out a laugh. “You’ve got to talk to Zorii for that. She’s the only one he listens to.”

“I will,” Rose says, and it sounds slightly threatening.

Poe is too attached to his face to ever wish for anything the like, but he’s never wanted to be in Babu Frik’s skin less than he does now. “Good luck. If it doesn’t work, just get him far away from Threepio so you don’t have to know what he’s saying.” He cocks his head in the direction of the cave exit, where a pile of unopened crates and unsorted stuff is waiting for them, getting thoroughly rained on. “See you in ten.”

Rose smiles and nods once. “General.”

She squeezes through a group of allies chatting close to their table and disappears in the direction of the command centre, leaving Poe to stare at air. When he returns to shutting most of his taste buds off in order to gulp the rest of the food down, his eyes wander over to the right side of the cave, where Rey’s little alcove is still empty.

Maybe that’s for the best for now, until Poe has had the chance to blow off some steam and up some TIEs. Still, he doesn’t look away much until his ten minutes are up and he gets back to work.

-

Poe doesn’t realise what’s happening until it’s already over. He swerves to dodge half a TIE fighter wing hauling towards him from the explosion he just caused, Rose’s scolding fresh on his mind, and twists his X-Wing around in a loop to get better visuals on the TIE tailing one of their ships, when he’s suddenly looking straight into a bright ball of fire and light as the TIE blows up with a bang before any blast can reach it.

It’s a big explosion. The fire catches. And the ship it’s been tailing bursts into flames and shatters.

“No!” Poe hears himself shout over the sickly familiar cracking sound in his comm that makes his blood run cold. “No, no, no, no!”

He fires a salve at an approaching TIE before he processes anything. It hits, and there’s more fire, and Poe puts two and two together just as his comm cracks again and tells him that somewhere he can’t see, it just happened again.

“Shit!” He yanks his X-Wing’s control stick around and opens more fire, holding up, swallowing down what his throat stubbornly wants him to choke on. “Alright, guys!” he shouts into his comm. “Black Leader to all! Get as far away from them as you can!”

“What the fuck was that?” Jessika’s horrified, static-laced voice reaches him through the comm.

“They’re blowing up in our faces now!” Poe shouts back. “Keep your distance, and don’t let them tail you!”

The dots on his radar tell him that his squadron is complying sooner than their voices do. He tastes bile, but he also spots a TIE approaching at rapid speed, so he pushes everything else away.

Time for a one-track mind.

“Hold on, buddy,” he yells at BB-8, who emits a low beep. “We’re gonna get that bastard.”

There’s a series of adjustments on the controls that Poe’s hands make on their own, and then his X-Wing purrs as he pulls hard on the control stick and it shoots upwards in a straight line.

“Stay focused on the mission!” he commands, upside down in his cockpit, as far as that’s a thing in the vacuum of space. “No change of plans! Zero in on those star destroyer cannons as soon as you can and give the bombers cover!”

There are shouts of agreement echoing in his comm and ringing in his ears, but he barely hears them. “Just stay the fuck away from those TIEs!” he bellows as he speeds the X-Wing up and brings it back down, coming up right behind the TIE and blowing it up before it can pull any shit on its own.

Another one appears behind him before the first one is done exploding, but Poe keeps his course. If he times this well, he can make it crash into a cannon without ever getting close to it.

From there on, it’s easy. The squadron stays safely ahead of any TIEs following them, and within minutes, they have a system figured out that has everyone watch their squad mates’ backs and take out any TIEs tailing them pre-emptively. Poe takes out one cannon by letting a TIE crash into it and another with the burst of adrenalin that success gives him, and he doesn’t think about the Chandrila kid whose ship he just saw explode, or the middle-aged Outer Rim merchant who isn’t showing up on his radar either, or Snap, or Leia.

The bombers drop their missiles, breaking through every defence the star destroyer still had, and then Jessika and Suralinda go in, flying in practised tandem, and take the thing out for good.

They get a round of relieved congratulations. Afterwards, the whole squadron hovers between flying debris in sombre silence, until Poe gives the command to return to base.

It has finally stopped raining when they land on Ajan Kloss. The sun is peeking through the remaining clouds. Poe pulls his helmet off and hides his face in his hands for three heartbeats, before he steadies his strained breathing and climbs out of his X-Wing.

No one is cheering. They all look at each other with wide eyes and a bit of terror. What just happened isn’t yet fully comprehensible, but Poe comes a whole lot closer to getting it when he watches the two remaining Chandrila kids stagger towards each other and crash into a hug.

He finds Suralinda’s shoulder within his reach and pulls her into a half-embrace.

“Damn good work out there.”

“You too,” she answers automatically. It sounds sincere, but she isn’t smiling. Though that doesn’t mean much with Suralinda.

Poe squeezes her arm and lets her go, taking enough steps forward to be able to see every face of his squadron. He claps his hands twice and holds his arms up until all eyes are on him.

“Everyone!” He raises his voice, slipping into the clear, steady tone he’s used more often than not these past days. “You did a great job out there. Every single one of you. This was a good mission. I want you to remember that.”

He looks around, at the faces of his fellow Resistance pilots, who have heard him give a variant of this same speech a hundred times in the past year alone, as well as those of their new allies, who look like they don’t quite know if they should believe him yet.

“You did great,” he reminds them in particular. “You were quick, you were precise, you protected each other and worked together like a charm. Most of you didn’t know each other before you joined this squad, but you’re a great team already.”

That earns him a few tentative smiles, not directed at him but between neighbours, fellow pilots, and newfound friends. Jessika lightly punches Zorii’s arm, and that’s enough fuel to barrel on through this speech.

He pauses before going on, lets them take in the praise, and waits until their eyes return to him and their expressions go stern again. Poe is pretty sure he matches them in how their grief is barely concealed by their set jaws and tense postures.

“Not everything is going to go perfectly,” he says and lets his gaze wander, trying to meet each of their eyes. “We will lose people, like we have today. We might lose battles. We all have lost more friends than we ever thought we could mourn these past years. When I look around at the people I’ve fought with in the Resistance for years, I don’t see anyone who is still the same person they were when I first met them.”

If he were completely honest, he’d say that most of the people he started out fighting with aren’t here to be looked at anymore. He makes do with those who are left and meets eyes with Suralinda and Jessika, who have lost just as many squad members as he has. With Karé, who has only just lost her husband but was adamant that she’d keep flying missions anyways.

He’s kind of tasting bile again, so he pushes on. “But we’ve won too. We won the war!”

The entire squadron straightens up at once at that, many of them with startled, uncertain smiles on their faces.

“And we’re going to keep winning,” Poe goes on. “No matter what hits us, we keep going and we never lose hope. That’s what brought us here. We freed a system from the influence of the First Order today. We did that yesterday. And we’re gonna do it again tomorrow.”

Jessika throws him a salute. All around the circle they’ve formed, pilots nod, and some mutter words of agreement. Good. They’ll need that energy to get over the shock.

Poe claps his hands again, once, to signal that he’s done talking. “It’s an honour to fly with you. I’ll see you all at the command centre in an hour for the wrap meeting.”

The spell breaks and the circle dissolves slowly, accompanied by low, hesitant chatter and the first distressed questions. Most of them give Poe an appreciative nod before they leave. Some add a respectful “General”, or “Good work, General”, that Poe accepts with what he hopes is a calm and collected look.

He feels like turning around and climbing straight back into his X-Wing, but his eyes fall on the two kids from Chandrila, who are walking away slowly, holding each other close. One of them is crying. Poe closes his eyes to count to ten and steady himself enough to go after them.

When he opens his eyes again, Zorii is standing in front of him. She pulls her helmet off and runs a hand through her hair. Her bloodshot eyes muster Poe like she’s never seen him before.

“Great speech, General.”

“Thanks. Great manoeuvres up there.”

Poe reaches out to grasp her hand. Zorii squeezes back.

“How are you doing?” she asks, in a way that makes it obvious that she knows the answer she’d get if they were still close enough for Poe to tell her everything.

“Holding up,” he answers. “You?”

Zorii purses her lips. “I could do with a drink. I guess I can’t count on you joining me?”

Poe would, in fact, kill for a drink, but the kids he needs to talk to are already starting to disappear between the trees, and there are some stupid decisions he can’t afford to make. “Ask me again tonight,” he says. “And don’t show up to the wrap meeting drunk.”

Zorii lifts one eyebrow challengingly, but Poe’s eyes are elsewhere.

“I need to talk to those kids from Chandrila,” he mutters. “Make sure they’re alright.”

It’s halfway an explanation to Zorii for why he has to leave, but when he tries to take a step forward, she puts a hand on his chest and holds him back.

“I’ll do that.”

Poe meets her eyes. “No, you won’t. I recruited them.”

“I don’t think that matters.” Zorii’s hand doesn’t budge. She holds his gaze steadily, almost like a challenge. “They lost a friend,” she says quietly. “I lost a home. Maybe we’ll do each other good.”

It’s the sincerest she’s been since Kijimi, and Poe can’t possibly argue with this. He gently puts a hand on hers and slides it off his chest. “Thanks. Tell me how it went later.”

“Yes, General.” Zorii takes a step back, but she hesitates before she leaves. “You never could have cut it as a smuggler,” she says, a lot more gently than the content of her words implies. “You’re way too good at being a hero.”

He really, really doesn’t know what to say to this, not when it comes from Zorii and sounds so close to something approaching admiration, so he settles on giving her a tense smile and squeezing her hand before he lets go of it. She answers that with a meaningful look and turns away, her helmet under her arm, heading off with quick steps.

Poe hasn’t looked away from her yet when someone touches his elbow and he glances around to find Jessika, who has a deep, anxious scowl on her face.

“What the hell was that up there?” she asks.

“No idea.” Poe grits his teeth. “But we’ll find out. I want analytics run on every part of this mission. They’re not gonna catch us off guard like that again.”

Jessika nods grimly. “They’re cornered. It makes sense that they’ll come up with new things now if they see it as a chance to save their skins.”

“So we still have to be one step ahead of them,” Poe finishes her thought.

They look at each other for a moment. Jessika looks tired, but not quite as tired as Poe feels. Something in her eyes shifts after a few seconds and she reaches out to put a hand on Poe’s upper arm.

“Do you want me to prepare the wrap meeting?”

Poe’s first instinct is to decline and do it himself, like he was supposed to, but he looks into her eyes and then at Zorii, who is walking off alongside the two Chandrila kids with a hand on the shorter one’s shoulder, and he thinks of Lando and what he said about himself and Han and Luke and Leia and how all they had was each other.

“Thanks, Testor,” he says and grips Jessika’s shoulder. “I owe you one.”

“You don’t,” Jessika retorts. She lets go of his arm and pats his chest instead. “Take a break, Poe.”

She’s gone before he can reply, calling after Suralinda to make her help with the setup. Poe is left staring at her and the rest of the squadron leave while he alone stays behind, his X-Wing in his back.

BB-8 rolls past him, changes course and circles him once.

“Hey,” Poe says, looking down at him. BB-8 beeps back and keeps circling him. Poe cocks his head. “I’m fine. Go to Rey if you want to.”

BB-8 beeps in protest.

“I said I’m fine.” Poe groans when BB-8 makes clear that he is having absolutely none of that and rolls in front of him with an accusing lens-stare.

“Alright, then stay.”

He stomps over to his X-Wing, BB-8 at his heels. He has no idea what he’s doing here. The ship stayed fully intact today, so at least Rose won’t have any complaints, but that also means that there is nothing to fiddle around with or fix and he has no proper excuse not to head back to base.

He comes to a halt next to the ship and fixates a spot on its side, where the orange paintjob is scratched. He’ll have to re-do that eventually, once it gets bad enough to be noticeable at first glance or he can be certain that it won’t immediately get damaged again, whatever comes first. Maybe he should just paint the thing black again, as a call-back. It feels kind of inappropriate to have “Black Leader” as a call sign but no black paint on his ship.

The scratches and the orange blur together in his vision, and Poe punches the ship’s side, hard.

“Fuck,” he swears. He punches it again. The metal clonks but doesn’t budge. Poe lets out a loud groan that is almost a growl and blinks the tears out of his eyes. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

The sides of his hands pulse in a dull ache. He flexes them and braces his open palms on the X-Wing, leaning forward against it and taking laboured breaths while he keeps his eyes open wide enough for the warm air to dry them. They start burning a bit after that, so he shuts them tight and stumbles forward until he can bump his forehead against the side of the ship. His hands are tight fists on both sides of his head, keeping him steady, and his jaw is clenched so hard it hurts.

BB-8 circles his feet, beeping in distress and concern.

“With you in a second, buddy,” Poe chokes out. “Just gimme a moment.”

With great effort, he steadies his stance. One by one, he makes himself recount the things that made him giddy with excitement last night. They won the war. His friends are alive. Finn loves him. He takes deep breaths and lets them out after a pause, and slowly, his heart rate returns to its normal pace.

He doesn’t know how long this takes, but he knows he’s not quite done when he hears quick steps approaching, BB-8 beeps loudly and rushes off to join their new company, and Finn’s voice is there.

“Poe!” he calls, which seems to offend BB-8, who responds with a disapproving whistle. “Yeah, hi to you too,” Finn says, and then repeats, “Poe!”

Poe detaches himself from the X-Wing. Finn takes one good look at him and hurries forward until they’re almost face to face.

“What’s going on?”

Everything about his expression is so intense it goes straight through Poe’s skin. His eyes are wide and his brows upturned, casting deep shadows on his face, but none of it is harsh. He’s as gentle as the hand he extends towards Poe, hovering an inch from his shoulder like he’s asking permission. Poe grants it, reaching out himself to put a hand on the inside of Finn’s elbow, and Finn grips his arm firmly.

“Hey,” Poe says. He’s fully aware that he probably looks like shit. He tries to play it off with a casual look, but the wrinkle between his brows won’t quite budge, so he gives up and frowns instead. “How much do you know?”

“Jess filled me in.” Finn presses his lips together. “You got TIEs blowing up in your faces?”

“Yeah,” Poe says grimly. He finds Finn’s eyes and takes in some warmth. “We lost two.”

He says it flatly, like another piece of information, the way he’s been giving this kind of news for months, but Finn doesn’t need more to get it. He nods lightly and his hand closes around Poe’s arm. He lifts his other hand to Poe’s shoulder and then he’s holding him steady, strong hands on both of Poe’s sides.

“We’ve lost a lot more on half of the missions we did last year.”

Poe’s shoulders go tense and his hands clench. “We’re on borrowed lives, Finn,” he bites out. “Every one of those we lose sends a message.”

“I know!” Finn says loudly. They look at each other for a beat and Finn tightens his grip. Softly, he repeats, “I know."

His fingers are digging into Poe’s skin, but it’s never too much, never enough to hurt. Poe’s deep breaths slow down. There’s a small beep from below and BB-8 bumps his shin, which helps, too.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says. “The TIE just went straight in, no safe distance, and blew up out of nowhere.” He scrunches his face up in pain and confusion. “Why’re they blowing up their own ships? They’re cut off from resources and they know it. They’ve got no way to recruit new pilots.”

Finn swallows. “It’s protocol, actually.”

He doesn’t look uncomfortable, but Poe still leans a bit closer to him. “That’s protocol? Blowing up?”

“Well, not exactly that,” Finn admits. “But I reckon it’s close enough. If you’re a trooper, you live and die for the First Order. They tell you that twice a day. Your own life doesn’t matter to them. So when they notice they’re in deep shit, they send out as many troops as they need to hold up their enemies and get away. They don’t care if anyone comes back, and usually no one does.”

“Fuck,” Poe breathes. He’d known about half of that, about the First Order’s indifference towards their soldiers’ lives, but it’s always something else to hear it from Finn. He gently rubs the side of Finn’s arm, where his hand is still resting. “You think they wanted to distract us and bail?”

“Maybe.” Finn shrugs, looking unconvinced. “Or they know they’ve lost and they’re just trying to take as many of us with them as they can.”

Poe swears under his breath. “I should have listened to Jannah,” he mutters. His hand drops from Finn’s arm. “Maybe we should’ve taken one of you along. Someone who knows how their damn protocol works.”

He’s getting agitated enough to try to take a step back, even at the risk of Finn’s hands leaving his shoulders, but Finn shakes him a little and cuts him off.

“None of us could’ve guessed that,” he says intently. “It’s protocol to sacrifice your troops, yeah, but I’ve never heard of anyone blowing their own TIEs up. Maybe we should’ve guessed that they’d try something new now that they’re out of options, but we didn’t.”

Poe clenches his jaw and nods slowly. “I can’t see those things coming.” He sounds choked and doesn’t try to fight it. “I can’t read them like that. I’m not Leia.”

“No, you’re not,” Finn says, and that’s too much of a call-back not to hurt. But Finn catches his gaze again and stares him down. “Neither am I. But Leia couldn’t have gone out and fought alongside her own squadron. Leia wasn’t good friends with a third of the people she gave orders to. Half the pilots on that squadron wouldn’t even have joined if Leia had tried to convince them.”

He’s so close, and his hands are very warm, and each of his words has that spark that Poe sees in him when he talks at strategy meetings. It’s cliché to say that Poe is enthralled by him, but he is. He’s always been, from that first moment on, when that then-nameless stormtrooper had taken off his helmet and looked at him with a fire in his eyes that had burnt away all the fear and the horror of torture.

Finn has that kind of energy that pulls people in and pumps them full of power. It’s hard to believe that anything is impossible with him there. But it’s his touch that gets Poe now, the gentle pressure on his upper arms, and the look in Finn’s eyes that makes his chest warm up from the inside.

Poe doesn’t relax yet, but the very corners of his mouth twitch up into a tense but warm smile.

“You’re a great General.”

“So are you,” Finn replies without missing a beat. “We’re in this together.”

“Yeah.” Poe can feel his smile slowly widening. He brings up both his hands and puts them on Finn’s arms, just where his biceps meet his shoulders. “We are.”

Finn doesn’t quite mirror his smile, but he answers it. His is tight, his lips pressed together, but it’s a little lopsided and that makes something in Poe’s guts boil in the best way. He wants to trace Finn’s smiling lower lip with his thumb, or run his fingers over the smooth skin of his cheek, or kiss his eyelids closed over his startling dark eyes. He also has both hands in a prime spot to feel the strength in Finn’s arms, and that does its thing, too.

Poe bites his lip, because this morning burnt him out and he doesn’t have the energy left to behave like he’s any less besotted and desperate than he is. It’s his saving grace that BB-8 is providing some much-needed audience by rolling in circles around them. With Poe’s luck, his own droid would tell Rey every detail if he started making out with Finn now, and he really doesn’t need more problems.

It’s like having kissed Finn has heightened his senses. He’s acutely aware of every muscle in Finn’s face, of the way his fingers tighten just the tiniest bit around Poe’s arms, of the tension in his shoulders.

He also notes that Finn is staring at his lips and his eyes are a little glazed over, and, well, it’s good to know that Poe isn’t alone in this.

“Fuck,” Finn says quietly. There’s a distressed curl on his brow. “Come here.”

He pulls Poe in, takes a short step forward to meet him halfway, and wraps his arms around him in a tight embrace. Poe’s arms move on their own, one sliding around Finn’s torso and the other over his shoulder, his hand settling on the space between Finn’s shoulder blades.

He lets out a very deep breath and buries his face in the crook of Finn’s neck. His nose and lips press against Finn’s skin in what might be a kiss but isn’t because they both keep perfectly still. Poe shuts his eyes tightly and gives in to the limpness that’s been threatening to overcome him, sinking into the embrace like he’s lost the muscle tension necessary to stand on his own.

It’s absolute bliss that is only interrupted by the fact that Poe can’t kiss his way up from the pulse point on Finn’s neck to his earlobe, at least not if he wants to keep a clean conscience.

After a moment, Finn’s hand ends up in Poe’s hair and he starts massaging his scalp lightly, which might just be the best sensation in the world.

Slowly, the anger seeps out of Poe’s bones, leaving a heavy, grounding sense of grief.

“Rose thinks White Flag is gonna work,” Finn says eventually, apropos of nothing. “We’re almost done setting it up.”

Poe gives himself some time to process that. A little tension returns to his body.

“That’s damn quick,” he says against Finn’s soft neck.

“Yeah.” Finn’s arms tighten around Poe, which matches the tentative excitement lacing his voice. “Turns out Jannah’s friend Jayelle has a knack for mechanics. She never worked in communications, but she’s tinkered with the tech a lot, and now she knows how their security’s set up. She and Rose are working on a code that can get us access to every minor First Order communications network.”

Poe stares at the part of his X-Wing that does not disappear behind Finn’s neck, which takes up most of his field of vision. He can almost see the strategy maps of their next missions and mentally starts moving around symbols and editing action plans.

The bit of adrenalin that returns to his bloodstream makes him twitch, and he draws back a bit to look at Finn. That’s probably a mistake because now he can see Finn’s lips again and they’re so damn close that it wouldn’t take an ounce of effort to kiss him hard, but Poe has to make sure Finn sees his incredulous smile.

He takes his hand off Finn’s shoulder blades and presses it to his chest instead. “That’s fantastic.”

Finn grins, then glances down at BB-8, who is whistling excitedly, and grins more confidently. “I know! Give us a couple days and we’re good to go.”

Poe lets out a breathless laugh. Days. After the disaster that was today’s mission, he needed that – one thing is working better than it was supposed to, at least. He shifts his hand on Finn’s chest and pokes him with his index finger.

“What do you think of a trial run? We can get you, Rose, Jannah, and Jayelle on the Falcon and in close enough proximity to some star destroyers to run tests before we start this operation for real. We’ve got enough firepower to give you cover, so you wouldn’t even be in combat.”

Finn’s eyes gleam at that. “Yeah! We’re doing that. Jannah’s gonna love being in the field.”

“If she learns how to fly, we’ll bring her along on some more missions,” Poe says, though right now, he doesn’t feel like bringing anyone along who isn’t a good enough pilot to evade exploding TIEs.

Finn wrinkles his nose. “I’m not sure if flying is what Zorii’s teaching her.”

“Heard anything about that?” Poe raises his brows and pretends that he didn’t bring up the subject to ask this exact question.

“No, and I don’t really want to. That’s none of my business.”

That’s technically correct, but Poe feels like he should have special access to this business on account of being the wingman.

“You probably know way more about that than me,” Finn adds. For someone who still has a hand on the back of Poe’s neck, he looks very exasperated.

Poe shakes his head. “Zorii doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“You’d know,” Finn comments in a dry voice that makes Poe want to kiss him and tell the whole galaxy.

“Do you have a mission in mind for the trial run?” he asks before he can make any bad decisions.

Finn’s forehead creases in thought. “Not really. We’ll take what comes up.” He stops abruptly, moving back as far as he can without breaking the embrace. “Oh, wait. I’ve got news.”

“Shoot,” Poe says automatically.

“We got a message from Kashyyyk. They’re asking for help.”

Poe blinks. “Kashyyyk? I thought they were handling things by themselves.”

Finn’s reply to that is an eyeroll of epic proportions. His whole body moves with it. “Wookiees,” he groans. “Haven’t told us half of what’s actually going on until now.”

Poe has the urge to rub his eyes, or massage his temples, or just put a hand over his eyes and hide behind it, but that would mean that he’d have to take his hands off Finn, and he’s not up for that. “Any idea how bad it is?”

“I’ve got the plans here; wait.” Finn steps out of the embrace for good. The hand he’d had on Poe’s neck drops and he uses it to reach for something in his jacket’s inside pocket. Poe takes that as a sign to take his hand off Finn’s chest, but he keeps his other arm around Finn’s torso. After a moment, Finn pulls a datapad out of his jacket and pulls Poe closer with his other hand, which he moves to rest it on Poe’s waist.

He hands Poe the datapad. Poe turns it on and skims the message. It’s nominally a call for help indeed, but it might more accurately be dubbed a call for assistance. Poe is inclined to attribute that to the struggles of translating Shyriiwook, though maybe he’s just been around Chewie too much to be able to imagine any Wookiee explicitly asking for help if it’s clear that the situation is mostly under control. It might be cultural stereotyping; he’ll have to work on that.

There’s a map attached to the message. It’s pretty detailed and describes both the locations of First Order facilities and the status of the Wookiee advances in taking them down. Poe has looked at strategy maps more than at any of his friends lately, to the point where he sees them when he closes his eyes, so it takes him only a few seconds to make sense of it and assess the situation.

“That’s a walk in the park,” he judges. “They don’t need help, they need starfighters.”

“Probably,” Finn agrees. “Good thing we aren’t short on those anymore.”

“Not with the stuff we got from our new allies, we’re not. You’ve seen the supplies we got?”

“Yeah,” Finn says, slowly, making sure to convey how impressed he is. “Lando’s a diplomatic miracle.”

Poe nods in agreement, though he’s looking at the map more than he’s looking at Finn. “Getting him on that job was my best idea this month,” he mutters absently.

The calculations his brain has been running in the background have yielded results, and he gets caught up in how they fit into the greater scope of things, which involve two dead pilots and a squadron that was harshly shaken awake from their victory-induced sense of security. Losing sight of that is not an option. What the squadron needs is a breather.

He keeps his eyes glued to the datapad and his hand to the small of Finn’s back. “We should head to Kashyyyk tomorrow. Half the systems that asked for help aren’t seeing active combat yet. We can still afford a change of plans.”

Finn eyes him suspiciously. “Yeah, but you were gonna help out Felucia tomorrow. Which is a combat zone.”

“That’s more of a siege,” Poe argues. “One day won’t matter to them; they’re holding up alright.”

Finn looks utterly unconvinced, so Poe sighs and opens the message up again. That’s a difficult task to accomplish with only one hand, but Poe flies X-Wings for a living. Technological controls can’t inconvenience him.

“Going by the forces the First Order has there, a mission to Kashyyyk needs maybe half the squadron,” he says. Finn helpfully takes the pad out of his hand so Poe can make it show the appropriate section of the message. “Two thirds, if we want to eliminate all the risks. They need us to take out one base ship. I could do that alone in my sleep.”

Finn shoots him one drily doubtful glance but doesn’t comment. Instead, he squeezes Poe’s waist and asks, “Easy victory?”

“It’s what they need right now,” Poe says simply. “And we need the time to analyse what happened today before we go into anything big.”

“So we’re taking a break,” Finn clarifies.

“Yeah.” Poe looks up at him, searching for his eyes. “Opinions?”

He gets an opinion from BB-8 before Finn can even notice the way Poe is looking at him. It’s a long beep followed by a melody of shorter ones, and it’s tough criticism.

“I know you wanna blow up star destroyers.” Poe gives his droid an irritated frown. “But we can’t all be made of metal and circuits.”

That offends BB-8 immensely, going by the hurt beep he emits.

Poe sighs. “Alright. Sorry.”

“He didn’t mean it like that,” Finn adds. “He’s just in a mood.”

That’s emphatically true, and it seems to placate BB-8, but Poe still grits his teeth and looks straight ahead. He’s in a mood alright. He feels like he’s been in one for a year.

He startles out of the grim, sick feeling that is threatening to take hold of him again when Finn tugs on his waist and, by proxy, his entire body.

Finn has lowered the datapad and slides it back into his pocket when Poe turns towards him. His eyes are very soft and his voice very dark. “Can’t blame you for that.”

Just then, BB-8 nudges the tip of Poe’s boot and lets out an apologetic sound.

Poe nudges him back. “Not your fault, buddy.”

Then Finn gets his undivided attention by putting a hand on his shoulder again. “I’m with you on the break thing. If we’re really quick with White Flag, we can do the trial run at Felucia. The setup would be perfect for that.”

That’s true; the First Order forces there are organised enough to likely still work with their accustomed communication patterns, and they’d be fighting both on land and in space for that mission, which would allow them to test their technology in both environments.

“Are you gonna be ready that soon?” Poe asks sceptically.

Finn shrugs. “Probably not. But we’ll try, and we can’t run anything on Kashyyyk with all the stormtroopers there in active combat on the ground and half the Order’s forces wrecked, so I’m all for preponing that one.”

“Good. Then we’re doing Kashyyyk tomorrow.” Poe slides his hand up Finn’s back and grips his shoulder as a sign of appreciation. BB-8 voices tentative agreement, and Poe gives him a weak smile. “I’ll get you something to do on Kashyyyk, promise. I wanna see if we can blast our way through the ground bases without taking down any trees.”

Sometimes, he wonders if BB-8 somehow got programmed with a bit too much empathy and adopted Poe’s thing for adrenalin. Either way, providing the prospect of a challenge always gets him a very content droid, and BB-8 is a delight when he’s happy. Poe could really use some positive company once he tries to tackle the rest of the day.

His chest tightens at the thought. He covers half his face with one hand, breathing into his palm. “I’ll tell the squadron we’ve got a change of plans at the wrap meeting.”

“When is that?” Finn asks.

Poe has no idea what time it is. “Soon?” he guesses.

Finn pats his shoulder. “Are you good to go?”

He should be, Poe thinks, but he kind of isn’t. He blinks up at Finn. His eyelids feel heavy, like someone tied a ton of metal to them. “One more moment,” he says and buries his face in Finn’s shoulder again.

Finn puts his arms around him without hesitation, and Poe just breathes. He can feel Finn’s warm breath against the sensitive skin between his neck and his ear, and Finn’s pulse against his lips, which is slightly quicker than usual. He sees Kashyyyk strategy maps when he closes his eyes, and bright balls of fire in space afterwards that might once have been TIEs or Resistance ships. Once it’s reduced to debris and flames, everything kind of looks the same.

Finn lightly rubs Poe’s back through his pilot suit, which, now that he thinks about it, has to be a little too sweaty for comfort. He doesn’t really care as long as Finn doesn’t. He feels like he could fall asleep right here, against Finn’s shoulder, leaning into his chest, but they do have a Resistance to run.

Poe gives Finn’s back two light pats. “Alright,” he says and moves away.

By the looks of it, Finn was less prepared for this to end than Poe was, and Poe considers regretting his decision not to stay here for another hour, consequences be damned. But then Finn swallows and shifts so he’s standing next to Poe, one arm still around him. “Let’s go,” he says and pushes Poe forward.

Poe lets himself be pushed. “Speaking of,” he says. “Are you free now? We could use your intel at the wrap meeting. About First Order protocol and all that.”

“Sure,” Finn answers and Poe’s heart becomes a little lighter. “I want to brief the squadron on our progress with White Flag, anyways. Recruiting stormtroopers makes no sense if we have no pilots to pick them up and have their backs.”

Poe nods grimly. “If we still have any pilots willing to fly with us after today.”

Finn punches him in the arm for that. “Of course we do. They knew what they signed up for.”

Poe gives him a doubtful look. “Did they?”

“Yeah, they did.” Finn stops in his tracks. They aren’t yet out of the landing field and are now standing right next to Jessika’s X-Wing. “All of those people came to Exegol,” Finn says. “They’ve seen how bad it can get. They’re here because they want to take down the First Order, and they’re gonna stay until that’s done. Have some faith in them.”

Poe thinks, with sudden clarity, that Finn could probably make him have faith in anything. “Rebel scum?” he asks and raises one eyebrow.

Finn smiles. “Rebel scum.”

He looks so sure of himself and everything around them that Poe has to laugh. “I love your optimism,” he says.

Finn leans into him and grips his shoulder tightly. “Thanks. It’s new.”

BB-8 overtakes them and rolls ahead, and Poe takes that as the motivation he needs to pull Finn along. They continue making their way back to the base grinning at each other, arm in arm, like they’ve done a million times over the past months, and it doesn’t feel any more or less electric than it had those previous million times, which probably says something about the two of them.

Poe checks the time halfway to the cave and clenches his jaw when he realises that some members of the squadron are probably already going to be there when they arrive at the command centre. He’s not looking forward to making them all remember this mission in detail, but he has more practice with things going wrong than with anything else. He’ll get this over with, with Finn by his side, and then he’ll get back to planning where to go from here, and tonight, he’ll find Zorii and get the two of them a drink.

He hasn’t forgotten about Rey. He doesn’t think anyone could forget about Rey, especially not him, not when Finn’s arm is around him and he really wants to kiss him again. He’ll find Rey, sooner rather than later, and sort some things out. He just needs an hour or five.

-

In the end, it’s Rey who finds him.

It’s an incredibly busy morning stretching into an incredibly busy midday. The issue with last-minute planning is that everyone has to be informed, and everyone seems to have twice as much to say about matters as they would have had if they had been told a week in advance.

Poe sends messages back and forth with Kashyyyk, which means that he listens to Threepio talk for way longer than could in any way be healthy, because his Shyriiwook is limited to Chewie’s three favourite words and reading the atmosphere. He had already assigned Jessika, Karé and Suralinda to helping him brainstorm potential plans of action the day before, and he is now tweaking what they finalised according to the new developments Kashyyyk informs him of.

Meanwhile, Finn takes one for the team and handles the communication with Felucia. Poe has the honour of being in his close proximity while he explains clearly and passionately why their mission to Felucia has been postponed, and he hopes his smitten face doesn’t show up on the holo to the Felucian General. The response Finn gets is quick and immediately understanding, which is unsurprising, considering how gracefully he handled the call.

As soon as the holo shuts off, Poe leans over, pokes Finn in the side and tells him that he wouldn’t make a half-bad diplomat after all. Finn looks like he doesn’t believe a word of that and tells him to go back to work. It’s a fair request, what with all the looking at Finn instead of strategy maps he’s been doing, so Poe decides to argue another day.

The plans are standing and the most pressing work around the base is handled around noon. Finn heads off to join Jannah and Rose in working on White Flag, and Poe leaves the cave in the direction of the landing field.

He has two hours left until the squadron lifts off. Finn had been right; no one had changed their mind about flying with them, not even the Chandrila kids or the dead Outer Rim merchant’s cousin, though Poe had ordered all three of them to take a day off. With a full-sized squadron instead of the decimated numbers of Poe’s worst-case scenario, liberating Kashyyyk will be child’s play.

He doesn’t expect any surprises this time, though the squadron has been thoroughly briefed on the First Order’s behaviour in a crisis and they have all been told to be cautious. Poe still wants to check back with Connix about the analysis of yesterday’s mission before they leave, so he’s decided to run the obligatory safety check on his X-Wing now and swap out some of the badly glued-together gear for the new spare parts they got yesterday.

He’s kneeling underneath the ship’s belly, head and hands buried in machinery, and toys with the power generator, when he hears a tell-tale whistling sound and BB-8 rolls up to his side.

“Hey, pal,” Poe says without looking away from the X-Wing’s intestines. “Lift-off’s in two hours; you’re early. Or are you hanging out with me again?”

BB-8 beeps something about having spent a lot of hours with him yesterday. That’s technically true, so Poe reaches out to give him an affectionate pat as an apology for his grumpiness, but he freezes before he has a chance to get his hand anywhere near BB-8.

“Sorry,” a quiet voice says from somewhere up and to the right. “I didn’t mean to steal your droid.”

Poe drops his tools, gives BB-8 that pat, and ducks out from below his X-Wing as fast as he can. Rey is standing there, next to the ship’s wing, her right hand rubbing her left wrist, and watching Poe with big, worried eyes as he wipes his hands on his trousers.

Poe stares at her like he’s looking at a ghost, which might not be too inaccurate if what she and Finn told him about what happened on Exegol is correct. He swallows thickly. He’s come up with a lot of things to say to Rey over the past days, most of them somewhat accusatory, but right now, all he feels is relief.

“Hey,” he says breathlessly and crosses the space between them to pull her into a hug.

Rey lets out a thick, heavy breath and brings both hands up to clench them in the fabric of Poe’s shirt. “Hey,” she answers. It’s muffled against Poe’s shoulder.

She’s thin and fragile in his arms, more so than someone who is maybe two inches shorter than him and could definitely lift him has any right to be. He runs his hands up and down her back in soft strokes until Rey stirs again, upon which he gives her a brief full-body squeeze and moves back. He keeps both his hands on her upper arms, holding her firmly, because now that he has her here, he’s reluctant to let go of her.

He can’t read her face at all, and he has no idea why she’s here after all the effort she made to avoid him, so his relief turns into a baffled frown.

“Did Rose tell you where I am?” he asks, which he should have known is a mistake.

Rey’s weak smile disappears completely and her whole face sobers up. “No, what? Did Rose talk to you?”

Poe really needs to start thinking before he talks. Leaning back, he takes his hands off Rey and puts them on his hips instead. “Depends,” he says, in a way that he fears isn’t at all casual. “How mad are you gonna be at her?”

Rey holds his gaze unflinchingly. “Depends on what she told you.”

There’s that cold stubbornness in the way she holds herself that tends to drive Poe up the wall, maybe because it meshes so badly with his own. But he’s too full of both affection and worry to slip back into their bickering.

“Nothing spicy,” he assures her. He waves a hand in her general direction, and adds a lot more softly, “She just told me I should talk to you.”

Rey swallows. “Then I’m not mad at her,” she says, which is a relief. Her arms wrap lightly around her own body, and Poe wonders if she’s aware that her hands settle where his had been just a moment ago. “I made her promise not to tell anyone, but she’s right about this.”

Poe directs his gaze skywards and takes a second to breathe. It does its job well enough to give him a vague idea of how to start dealing with everything.

He reaches out and pulls Rey to his side, arm firmly around her and hand on her shoulder to push her gently forwards. “Then let’s talk.”

She nods and lets him guide her along, past the X-Wing and towards a stack of crates they had piled up there, in safe distance to allow the ships enough landing space. They contain various spare parts and tools – most of them relocated from the piles of allied support supplies to a more convenient location – and a bit of bonding tape. Just in case.

BB-8 follows them, trilling quietly but obviously elated. Between his droid and the man he’s so stupidly in love with, Poe has gotten a lot of encouragement to pour his energy into building something with Rey as well. Now that he’s lightly rubbing her bare shoulder and feels her slender form press into his side, he’s grateful for that.

They separate when they reach the crates, and Rey climbs them like a staircase, sitting down cross-legged on one that is stacked on top of another. Poe doesn’t have that much ambition in him right now, so he takes the single crate next to Rey’s pair. It allows him to prop up his elbow next to Rey, so he does that and puts his other hand on her knee.

Rey glances down at him and fidgets with her hands folded in her lap. “I’m sorry for not talking to you,” she says. She’s not shy about it. Her voice is clear and her back entirely straight, but the creases on her forehead prove how genuine she is.

Poe nods and squeezes her knee. There’s no way he can tell her that she did nothing wrong, and he’s not going to try. But she’s here, and that’s enough for now.

“Tell me why and it’s water under the bridge.”

He can’t help the trace of a challenge in his voice, and Rey probably can’t help the way she presses her lips together, and Poe has no idea how Finn deals with two so very difficult people and still manages to love them.

But Rey shakes all the tension between them off by shaking her head and slumps down a little. She stares straight ahead, at nothing in particular, going by how dull her eyes look. Poe moves his thumb in circles over the fabric covering her knee and hopes that this works as well for her as it does for Finn.

“It’s just a lot,” Rey says. She sounds very, very tired, and just a little desperate. “I need to get a clear head again. I’ve been trying to meditate, but I can barely even concentrate. After everything that happened on Exegol…”

She trails off. Poe waits for her to continue, but apparently, she has lost her train of thought. She’s gripping her own hands so hard that her knuckles are stark white. Her eyes are unfocused, looking everywhere but at Poe, and eventually, she drops her head to stare at her own lap. Her breathing slows down.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

Her voice is small, almost like she’s afraid of saying it out loud. Poe has never seen her like this before. With Finn or Jessika or Karé or Suralinda, maybe even with Zorii, he’d know what to do now. With Rey, he’s at a loss for how to be who she needs while she lets out what she had so far kept bottled up from him. In the end, he lets go of her knee with a final pat and eases one of her hands out of the tight ball she’s formed with her fingers. He’ll do what he can – hold her hand and listen.

Rey musters their linked hands with a bit of scepticism, but she doesn’t pull away.

“I’m the last Jedi alive. I’m carrying all the old wisdom of the Order. If anyone wants to learn it, they’ll have to learn it from me. I know they’re there,” she adds, more quietly. “I can feel it in the Force that there are more people out there who are like me, all over the galaxy.”

Poe bites the inside of his mouth, because one of these people is right here at this base and has been around Rey for a year and would give his right arm to be trained by her. But it’s Finn’s place to tell her that, so Poe doesn’t bring it up.

Rey doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she goes on, and the despair is back in her voice. “I barely even know how to deal with the Force myself. I’ve come so close lately—”

She swallows and gives Poe a distressed look, the kind that begs for understanding. “—I’ve been so close to the dark side. I can feel it in me. I know how to resist it, but if I want to build up a new Order, I’ll have to teach others how to overcome it. I have to figure out if I even want there to be a new Order. And if I do, there’s so much I still need to learn about myself and about the Force and how it works and how to balance it, and I—” Her voice breaks. “I’m not a leader. I’m just Rey. I don’t know if I’m ready for all that.”

“Yeah,” Poe says. His gaze travels from his X-Wing in front of them up to the woods and the hills, where the entrance to the main cave is hidden behind all the trees. “I know what you mean.”

For a moment, just a split second after Poe looks up at her again, Rey frowns at him. Poe can almost hear the heated comment on the tip of her tongue, but he never gets to reply to it, because her whole body shifts a heartbeat later. Her eyes widen and fill with softness that replaces the tension in her face.

“You do, don’t you?” she asks.

It’s a rhetorical question, so Poe doesn’t answer. He does hold her hand a bit tighter when her fingers squeeze his, though.

Holding their eye contact, Rey continues, “I need some time to think things over. I didn’t think I could talk to anyone.”

“Finn and me, you mean,” Poe shoots back. She winces, which probably means that this was cruel, but so is pretending that she didn’t talk to everyone else at this base, so they’re even, as far as Poe is concerned.

Rey doesn’t put up a fight. “Yeah.” The grip of her hand loosens, but Poe keeps holding it, so she doesn’t pull away. “You’re the only ones who’d ask me about these things.”

It’s true that superficial acquaintances and droids don’t usually initiate long discussions about the Force, unless they are firstly insufferable and secondly Threepio. Poe casts a glance at BB-8. BB-8 looks back and rolls back and forth thrice.

Poe shakes his head and turns back to Rey. “That’s not how it works,” he says firmly. “You know we’re here for you. If you’ve got too much to deal with, your best option isn’t going off alone and leaving everyone else behind.”

Rey stares at him for a long moment. “I’m sorry about Kef Bir,” she says then, and she sounds so vulnerable that Poe almost drops all his leftover anger, climbs up the second crate and takes her into his arms.

Almost.

What he does is clench his jaw and snap back, “No. I’m not the one you need to apologise to for Kef Bir.” He swallows down the surge of familiar guilt and presses on. “I didn’t risk my life to go after you. You need to apologise to Finn.”

Rey shifts uncomfortably. “I know.”

“And you need to talk to him. He’s worried sick about you.”

“I know!” Rey repeats sharply. They glower at each other for a moment, like they’re arguing about breaking ships and droids again. Rey scrunches up her nose, purses her lips and takes a few deep breaths. “I know that,” she says. The animosity disappears from her voice. “I want to talk to Finn. But I don’t know how. Not about this.”

There’s probably a hint somewhere in there, something about things being way more complicated than they seem, something that matches with what Rose picked up on already and has something to do with Rey and Finn and how difficult it can be to talk to the person you love if you haven’t told them you love them. Poe sympathises. He’d just also lost the rest of his patience for this whole matter around the time Rey brought up Kef Bir.

“Are you going to tell me what _this_ is?” he asks. “Because I’ve been talking to Finn these past days, and he’d be in a way better place if you had been doing the same.”

“I know that!” Rey’s voice shakes. BB-8 beeps in protest. Poe feels utterly miserable. “I made a mistake! But I’ve made way bigger mistakes, and I don’t know what to think about any of that, and if I told Finn, I—”

She chokes on her words. It makes Poe soften down to his core, and he starts tracing the knuckles on her hand with his thumb.

“You?” he asks with both brows raised, but more gently than before.

“I’ve done enough to hurt him,” she says. “I don’t know what he’d do if I told him.”

She seems to be genuinely worried, which is a little ridiculous given the context. Poe frowns at her. “Finn wouldn’t drop you in a million years. You know that.”

That seems to reassure her a little, despite her avid nod and small, slightly out-of-place smile. “Yeah, I do.”

She gives BB-8 a brief once-over, and then looks down at her own hand holding Poe’s. She clenches and unclenches it a few times, but she still doesn’t let go of him. Rey’s hands aren’t as warm as Finn’s, and they’re a little more damp, at least in this humid weather, but they’re small, with thin, agile fingers and calloused palms that Poe can wrap his hands around easily.

Rey gives him a long look out of the corner of her eyes. “Can I tell you something really weird?”

Poe cocks his head at her. “I love weird things.”

A thin smile spreads across her lips and disappears as soon as it had come. She draws her brows together in a light scowl. Her shoulders are hunched just enough to make it appear like she’s hiding between them, but she does keep looking at Poe, even though she doesn’t quite seem comfortable doing so.

In what is almost a whisper, she says, “I kissed Ben. Kylo Ren.”

Poe’s brain grinds to a halt, re-calculates all the parameters he’d so far taken for granted, and re-starts with a heavy stutter. “You did _what_?”

“After he’d revived me,” Rey explains. She pauses, and adds a lot more gravely, “Just before he died.”

Yet again, it becomes painfully obvious just how much she’s been through lately. The last time they had really talked, just before the victory party, Rey had explained what had happened since she’d left on Kef Bir, from her trip to Ahch-To to the dyad in the Force to her death and subsequent revival by her – all of their – former archenemy.

The thing that had stuck with Poe the most, more so even than Kylo Ren’s unexpected change of heart, had been the concept that Rey had, somehow, been dead for a while. It’s still impossible to imagine. Hearing her talk about it makes it more real but not any less incomprehensible, and it makes shivers run down Poe’s spine.

He pushes those thoughts aside, onto the big pile of things he will deal with later, and focuses on the matter at hand, which is a lot less terrifying but just as bizarre.

He gapes at her. “Why the fuck did you do that?” When she doesn’t answer immediately, he half-turns towards BB-8 and gives him a baffled stare. “Did you know about that?”

BB-8 beeps a confirmation that contains just as much confusion as Poe’s thoughts right now. They share a long look, before Poe dares to glance back at Rey.

“Why?” he asks again.

Rey swallows. “I have no idea,” she admits. “I just did it. It was such a weird moment, and I was feeling so much, and…”

She takes a heavy breath, closes her eyes, and straightens up a little. When she opens her eyes again, they’re fixed on something next to the X-Wing, and she looks a lot calmer. “I was so grateful to him for what he did for me,” she whispers. “And I was so happy he’d found his way back to the light side. I’d always felt that there was good in him, and it was so overwhelming to see him choose it over the dark.”

It’s still a surreal thing to hear or imagine at all. Poe tries not to taste bile and tries not to grip Rey’s hand tightly enough to make her notice his heavy, doubtful frown, and he fails. Rey finds his eyes and gives him that pleading look again.

“I know you can’t forgive him. I don’t think you should. But I do.” She half-shrugs, defeated. “After everything he did, he still died a Jedi. I’ve made peace with that.”

Poe presses his lips together, but he gives Rey’s upper arm a pat with his free hand. “He tortured me,” he says. “It’s nothing personal.”

Rey tugs on his hand. Poe can’t tell if it’s an apology or a thank you, but it’s something along those lines, and he accepts it by tugging back. No hard feelings, is what he’s trying to convey. Just confusion.

“I still don’t get why the hell you kissed him,” he adds. The words leave his mouth against some resistance. He tries very hard not to apply any visuals to them.

When Rey furrows her brow, she looks like she couldn’t harm a fly. It’s highly misleading.

“Me neither.” Her eyes glaze over again. “I’ve never wanted to before. It’s just—he had just brought me back to life, and I was so happy it was all over and then I.” She gulps. “I just kissed him. I don’t know what it means that I did that.”

She searches for Poe’s eyes like an anchor. With every word she says, she radiates more distress.

“I don’t know anything about these things. I’d never kissed anyone before. Not like that, anyways.”

Poe sincerely doesn’t want to imagine what “like that” means in this context. He’s had a few too many good experiences with kissing lately, and around fifty times as many fantasies, so he comes up with a bunch of examples anyways. He grimaces lightly.

He also idly wonders what it means that he is jealous, just a little, on Finn’s behalf.

Rey continues talking, in little bits before she pauses and searches for the next word. “I don’t think I’m in love with him. It doesn’t feel like that; it’s nothing like—” She cuts herself off and waves her free hand around, like she can use the Force to pull in the right words. “It’s not like that,” she finishes lamely. “It’s not— I was happy and— I don’t know why the fuck I did that.”

Sometimes, it’s good to see that Rey isn’t actually perfect. No matter how much she is Leia’s protégé, or the love of Finn’s life, or the Jedi that singlehandedly took out Palpatine, she’s still sitting there, cross-legged on a crate of spare X-Wing parts, worrying the hem of her trousers and stumbling over her own words.

Poe flexes his hand, which Rey is gripping a little too tightly for comfort, and elbows her thigh. “We all do stupid things when we’re confused,” he promises. “I asked Zorii for a one-night stand after the victory party.”

Rey blinks, relaxes her hand, and gives Poe a taken-aback frown, like she has no idea what to do with that information.

“That’s a stupid idea,” Poe explains. “Really stupid. I don’t want to sleep with Zorii.”

“Then why did you?” Rey asks, still looking at him like he grew a second head.

“First of all, I didn’t, because Zorii had a bit more self-control and said no,” he clarifies. “Second of all, you remember that day as well as I do. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight either. It’s maybe not on the same level as kissing Kylo Ren, but it wasn’t my proudest moment.”

Slowly, the bewilderment on Rey’s face disappears and she softens. “I think,” she says after a while, “I just needed someone there. And I was happy that Ben was.”

Poe doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to reconcile Ben Solo, who is little more than a blurry childhood memory, with the man he’d last met up close while strapped to a torture chair and subsequently in his nightmares, who had almost killed Finn and Rey and had ruined Leia’s life. But if Rey can, he won’t argue.

He musters her from her head to her toes, which are tucked underneath her knees.

“And that’s what you can’t talk to Finn about,” he says. It’s intended to be a question, but it ends up as a statement.

Rey squares her shoulders and worries her lower lip with her teeth. “It’s part of it,” she admits.

Poe lets out a deep breath and rests his forehead on the tips of his fingers. “Finn won’t mind any more than I do.”

Rey sucks her lower lip into her mouth. When she releases it again, it’s bitten red. “I’m afraid,” she admits. “I know he won’t get angry. But I’m still afraid.”

“I’m not saying it’s not weird,” Poe says, “but it’s not gonna hurt Finn more than you not talking to him. You’re everything to him.”

That makes Rey look up, and their eyes meet. Hers are gentle if a little sad, and the smile that plays around her lips is hesitant. Still, there’s an overwhelming amount of love even in the way she straightens her back and nods very, very slightly.

Poe can’t help but mirror her energy and gives her a brief, warm smile. “You know Finn. He’ll get it, and he won’t blame you.”

“Maybe he should,” Rey says, so quietly Poe would have missed it if he hadn’t seen her lips move.

“Maybe more than he does,” he agrees. “Which is why you need to apologise for Kef Bir, and avoiding him these past couple days, and whatever else you come up with.”

“I will,” Rey promises. “You’re right. I have to stop running away.” 

She pulls Poe’s hand closer with her left hand and covers it with her right, holding it like a sacred thing. When she closes her eyes and steadies her breathing, she almost looks like she’s praying.

“I’ve been thinking about the Force a lot,” she says slowly, in a voice that seems to come from deep within her chest. “The old Jedi Order said that having strong attachments made you weak to strong emotions, and that could be a gateway to the dark side. But I think they were wrong.”

Poe shifts, bringing himself into a more comfortable position and facing Rey fully. He expects that he’ll understand around half of what she can say about the Force, but he doesn’t mind. It feels a little like he’s listening to a revelation.

“I’m not talking about love,” she continues. “Leia and Luke wouldn’t have been what they were without each other, or Han and Chewie, or Lando. I wouldn’t be here without you and Finn.” She shrugs. “Or Ben, I suppose. Everyone knows that.”

She throws Poe a glance, and he nods, encouraging her to go on.

She smiles tightly and looks away again. “It’s not about getting rid of your emotions.” Her voice turns strained around the last word, and Poe automatically resumes the motion of his thumb on her knee when he picks up on her shaky, broken tone.

“I’m so afraid,” she breathes, “and I’m so angry, and so sad. I can’t stop. I can’t just switch it off or meditate to make it go away and be rational again. And I don’t think that’s what balance is about. I think,” she adds, louder this time, and looks up into the sky with determination in her eyes, “that the light side means that you have to accept what you feel. You have to allow yourself to be angry and afraid. But you can never let it keep you from doing what’s right.”

Rey is scary when she gets like this. It’s a good kind of scary – she freaks Poe out in the same way space does with its vastness and trillions of stars somewhere in that void, and there’s no place where Poe feels more at home than amongst the stars. Rey might have her own strange ways, and he can’t yet bring himself to forget her leaving, but ultimately, he would trust her with his life and everything more important than that.

Still, she looks at nothing in the same way Leia sometimes used to do, like she can see things no one else sees, and she speaks about wisdom that sounds like it originated from a hundred tongues and ended up on hers.

“If you try to keep everything you feel locked away, it just gets worse,” she continues. “It makes you angrier. You have to face it head on. And you need people who can help you with that if you feel like you can’t do it on your own.”

She blinks and turns to give Poe one of her thin, playful smiles, and just like that, she’s back to being a young woman sitting on a crate.

“Thank you for listening,” she says softly.

Poe smiles back. “Anytime. I hope this is doing anything for you. I’m useless when it’s about the Force.”

Rey shrugs. “The Force is in all of us, in a way.” For a brief moment, she gets that distant stare again, and when she returns to the real world, her smile has turned sad. “I wish Leia were still here. She’d know what to do. I can sense her through the Force, but it’s not the same.”

After all the confusion and the Force talk, the grief for Leia is such a clear and certain thing that Poe feels it down to his fingertips. He feels heavy, all of a sudden. Like he’s entered a planet’s atmosphere after days in space and had forgotten the pull of gravity.

He rubs Rey’s knee some more. “We’re all making do without her.”

Rey nods. “But I miss her.”

“Me too,” Poe says around the knot that has formed in his throat at the realisation that she’s gone.

He had been taking it for granted already these past days. There hadn’t really been a chance to deny it, after she had passed all her responsibilities on to him. Her absence had been an indisputable fact by the time they had headed off to Exegol without her guidance.

But now, Poe realises that he hasn’t yet spent more than brief moments missing her. Not as a leader and a General but as a mentor and a person and a friend.

He goes over the list of Resistance members in his head and wonders how many of them have taken the time to truly mourn their Princess. He knows he hasn’t, in the same way he hasn’t taken much of a moment to mourn Snap, although he’d been by Poe’s side for years as a squadron mate and loyal Resistance fighter, and Poe had considered him one of his closest friends.

If he thinks about it, he doesn’t think Jessika and Suralinda have mourned him either. Even Karé went straight back to flying without losing much of a word about anything.

Poe blinks up at Rey. “Have you mourned her?”

Rey seems to consider that for a moment. “I tried,” she says. “But I don’t know how. I just get sadder when I think about her.”

BB-8 beeps in sympathy. Poe lets go of Rey’s hand for a moment to pat him. When he looks up again, Rey is watching them with a soft smile on her lips.

His brows draw closer and closer together while he studies her and thinks about what she said about the Force and the dark side. He feels the pull towards any specific kind of darkness just as much as he feels the Force, namely not at all, but he’s looked into Karé’s red-swollen eyes enough to realise that none of them are immune to the root causes of that darkness. They won a war, for fuck’s sake. They should have enough time to recover from that.

He puts his hand back on Rey’s knee. “Do you know any nice places around here? Somewhere you can go to get away from the base. Maybe see the stars.”

Rey’s eyes brighten. “There’s that clearing not too far off base that Leia and I trained at. It’s a great place to meditate. The noise from the base doesn’t get through the trees.”

“Exactly what I need.” Poe smiles at her. “Thanks. Mind showing me the way?”

“Now?” Rey asks, a little sceptically.

Poe glances at his X-Wing and the tools he’d unceremoniously dropped under its belly. “I was going to change some gear on the X-Wing. Maybe after that.” Then, he remembers whose knee his hand is resting on and cocks an eyebrow at her. “Wanna help me out?”

Rey uncrosses her legs and pushes herself to the edge of the crate, letting her legs dangle. It dislodges Poe’s hand, but her smile makes up for that. “Sure. Did you break it again?”

“No,” Poe says with a warning glare. “I just prefer to have as little tape on the inside of my starfighter as possible.”

“Wouldn’t be that much if you didn’t break it all the time.”

Poe pinches her arm. “Do you want to argue, or do you want to help?”

“I’m just saying that Chewie is right about the Falcon,” Rey says with an astounding confidence, considering that she doesn’t have her lightsaber and is within strangling distance.

“He’s not. I got us out of an emergency alive,” Poe growls. “He should be thanking me.”

Rey slips off the crates with all her natural elegance. “You had no reason to land as badly as you did on Kef Bir.”

His reasons had been that he’d been stressed and he’d gotten shot, but he doesn’t get to bring that up because Rey leans down to brush her hand over BB-8’s droid head, and BB-8 responds to that with a series of beeps that makes Rey laugh and Poe glare at him.

“Way to have my back,” he mutters. “Whose droid are you again?”

BB-8 whistles, and Poe gives him a clap on the side, because having a droid is no fun if he doesn’t tease you mercilessly. He gets to his feet with another dark look at Rey.

“I want to see you fly on Kef Bir. See how well you’d do.”

He realises the error in his words before he’s finished talking, but it’s already too late. He doesn’t want to see her fly on Kef Bir. He wishes he’d never had to see it.

Rey seems to pick up on it too, because her expression goes sombre again. “What do you need a quiet place for?” she asks before Poe can think about whether or not he should apologise.

He rounds BB-8 and joins her side. “I’m gonna get the Black Squadron away from business for an hour tonight. They need that.”

Rey musters his set jaw and heavy frown. “I’m sorry about Snap.”

“It’s alright.” Poe gently puts an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll be fine, sooner or later. I’m just worried about Karé.”

Rey nods quietly, obviously unsure what she could say. It’s fair enough; she hadn’t known Snap very well, although they had gotten along and the Squadron enjoys her company. In the end, she nudges Poe’s side with her whole upper body, which is a comforting gesture that she so obviously picked up from him that Poe has to grin.

“Let’s get to work,” he says and pulls her along. “It’d be great if you could take a look at the shield generator. I know what it’s supposed to look like from the inside, but it definitely hasn’t looked like that in months, and I want a second opinion on whether that counts as a modification or is just a cheap fix.”

Rey grins back. “Probably the latter, but I’ll check.”

They’ve almost reached the X-Wing when she furrows her brow again and her smile becomes tight. She clears her throat, and Poe gives her a questioning look.

“I’ll talk to Finn tonight. Promise. I’m still scared,” she admits. “But I’m not letting that stop me.”

She still doesn’t sound confident, but she seems determined enough. Poe doesn’t know how to tell her that he hadn’t really doubted her resolve to sort things out with Finn after the conversation they’d just had, so he just laughs and pulls her closer.

“That’s my girl.”

He lets go of her when they get to the ship and she is still laughing quietly. BB-8 rolls up to them with a whistle, and Poe kneels down to put both hands on his round metal body and give him an overview of the alterations he’s planning, because there’s no one who fixes X-Wings up better than an astromech droid.

Rey climbs on top of one wing to get to the shield generator and gets to work with a screwdriver she nicked from the pile of tools Poe had left next to the ship. Naturally, she insists that half the modifications are a disaster and starts pulling pieces of machinery out that she believes to be so far past their prime that they shouldn’t be part of an actively used starfighter at all.

Poe disappears underneath the X-Wing again and works with BB-8 to fix up the power generator, and he and Rey settle into firing comments back and forth that cover everything from the consistently terrible state of the Falcon and the Resistance’s formerly atrocious budget to personal flying style.

The way she looks at him is still a little distant whenever their eyes meet, despite all the light insults they throw at each other’s heads, but for now, it’s just good to have her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: 1) See that "very minor side character death" tag? This is the chapter. We don't know the characters and they die in spaceships, so we don't see anything gruesome. 2) A First Order pilot blows their own ship up to achieve aforementioned very minor side character death. Finn also has a few words to say about the First Order deliberately sacrificing their troops. 3) Poe has a bit of a stress-induced breakdown in this chapter, though I don't think he does anything too drastic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A disclaimer: I have no idea how actual technology works, so I don't know how Star Wars technology works either. But neither do half the people who write canon Star Wars content, so I feel like that's valid.

Kashyyyk is just as much of a walk in the park as expected. Jessika and Zorii fly a manoeuvre that even Poe would rather never see anyone attempt ever again, but they pull it off somehow and don’t stop laughing for minutes after, which is so infectious that Poe’s attempt to scold them for unnecessary recklessness turns out very half-hearted and is finally drowned out by his own cheers and Suralinda commenting, “If they had died doing that, then what a way to go.”

They make quick work of the last First Order base ship and then get down into Kashyyyk’s atmosphere to help the Wookiee ground troops take out the base there, and BB-8 calculates the routes expertly enough that Poe only blasts a single tree.

Everything takes just a little longer than planned because the people of Kashyyyk insist that they land and be thanked personally, and Poe spends half an hour telling various Wookiees that he really shouldn’t drink before getting back into a starfighter. When they leave the celebrations and get back to Ajan Kloss, the sun is red on the horizon.

The squadron is still not back to their initial post-victory level of hysteria, but Poe climbs out of his X-Wing and stretches with the dull, familiar pulse of leftover adrenalin everywhere in his veins that he considers to be one of the greatest feelings in the world.

He is part of a round of congratulations that consists mostly of content smiles and recounting the best manoeuvres of the day. Eventually, the Black Squadron featuring Zorii attaches itself to his personal space, and Poe tries again to tell Jessika and Zorii to please value their lives a little more. Between both Suralinda and his own excitement stabbing him in the back and telling him that it was a great move, he fails miserably.

His mind returns from the stars a few minutes later, when BB-8 joins their circle and makes no move to head off to find Rey instead. Poe congratulates his droid again on a job extraordinarily well done and starts looking around the crowd. Finn is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Rey, though he’s gotten so used to that being the case that he only belatedly remembers that it could be surprising.

He does however turn the right way just in time to see Jannah and Rose make their way towards him through groups of pilots. Jannah has a triumphant grin on her face that isn’t far from the one she had sported just after she had played a substantial role in taking down a gigantic fleet. Rose’s smile is a bit more controlled, but her eyes are gleaming with excitement.

“Poe!” Jannah calls as soon as they’re within earshot. “We’ve got news!”

“Good ones, I hope,” he calls back, which is a very rhetorical question. He grins when Jannah reaches him and bumps his shoulder, and Rose’s smile widens.

“Brilliant ones,” she says. She is cupping something small and mechanic in her hands, but it’s halfway hidden by her fingers and Poe cannot make out what it is.

Next to him in the circle, Zorii turns around and reaches out to tap Jannah’s shoulder. “I’d like some good news.”

Jannah beams at her. “Hey. Congrats on Kashyyyk.”

“That was child’s play,” Zorii says with a confident cock of her head.

Poe looks back and forth between them, trying to pick up on something more than Zorii’s light flirting, which she employs with everyone she’s vaguely interested in and that thus doesn’t mean much. Then, he directs a questioning look at Rose, who doesn’t pick up on what he’s asking and thus has no answers for him.

Instead, she seems to take it as a question about business and says brightly, “We’re nearly done with White Flag. We know how we’ll make it work.”

On second thought, business news is exactly what Poe wants to hear.

“Have I ever told you you’re fantastic?” he says, clasping Jannah’s shoulder with one and Rose’s with his other hand. “Give me the details.”

Rose holds up the item she’d been clutching. It’s a small plug, the kind that can be used to transport information from one system to another if one doesn’t have a convenient astromech droid. To Poe’s left, Karé throws a look over Zorii’s shoulder and stops talking mid-sentence. She takes a step closer, eyeing the plug curiously. Jessika and Suralinda join her a moment later.

Rose quickly scans her new audience and shares a brief smile with Jannah. “This,” she says, “contains a code that can get us access to any First Order base’s internal communication. It’s tailor-made to bypass First Order security. If we get this into their systems, we’ll have a direct two-way channel to any of their troops.”

“So we could hear everything they say?” Karé asks.

“And send them messages back,” Jannah confirms. “If we can hook it onto our own systems, anyone could access their communication.”

Suralinda lets out an impressed whistle. “Where was that tech when I was still a journalist?”

“Illegal,” Jessika deadpans.

“All is fair in love and war,” Poe states. “How does this work?”

“The First Order coordinates the communication between and with all their troops over one central system,” Rose explains. “Every unit is individually attached to that network, so their communication still works normally in case their bridge gets taken out. And that’s where we’ll get them.”

“Once we’re in, we’re in,” Jannah grins. “They can’t kick us out without severing their own comm lines.”

It sounds too good to be true. As always with those things, Poe’s brain spits out a series of possible flaws in the plan. “What’s the catch?” he asks, mustering Rose and Jannah suspiciously. “You’re looking at me like there’s a catch.”

“A minor one,” Jannah claims.

Rose turns the plug between her thumb and her fingers. “We need to physically connect the plug to their tech. Or anything that carries the code, I suppose,” she adds with a look at BB-8, who has joined the half-circle around her and Jannah. “A droid would work, too.”

BB-8 expresses his delight at the prospect.

“Calm down, pal. We’ll see what we can do,” Poe tells him. Towards Rose, he says, “How much of a catch is this? Because if we have to take out a command centre to start the operation, we might just as well not start it at all.”

Rose smiles, which already does wonders for restoring Poe’s confidence.

“That’s our advantage. The command centres are no more or less central to the system than everything else is. They just coordinate, they don’t hold things together.”

“The regular TIEs aren’t greenlit for base-wide two-way communication,” Jannah chimes in, “but that’s what the code’s for. We just need to get it in and it’s gonna give us authorisation on every communication level. So we don’t need a command centre. Plugging it into anything that’s part of the system should be fine.”

“So, what?” Jessika asks sceptically. “We knock out a stormtrooper, plug this thing into their comm, and we can call any star destroyer in the galaxy?”

“Not really.” Rose’s smile shrinks a little. A tiny, tense frown appears on her forehead. “They have a separate system for intergalactic and high-rank communication. We’re not getting into that one. But we want to reach the troops, not the officers, so it doesn’t matter.”

That means that they’ll need to secure a physical connection every single time they run this operation, but Poe is inclined to give that flaw a pass. War isn’t about waiting for the perfect plan – none of them would be here now if they had done that.

“I wouldn’t go for a trooper either,” Jannah says. “They’re authorised for almost nothing. If there’s any part of the security the code can’t bypass, we’ll definitely run into it if we enter on that level.”

“Not to mention that I don’t think stormtrooper armour has any sockets we could plug anything into,” Rose adds.

Jannah nods. “Yeah, it doesn’t. But a TIE should work. Or any speeder.”

Sometimes, Poe knows intuitively when a plan is going to work. It’s a skill that is courtesy of over a decade of experience. This is one of these times. He goes over the strategy maps burnt into his brain, searching for openings in the plans that would allow them to hijack a TIE or take control of a minor communication facility, but his skin is already prickling with the impulse to get back into his X-Wing, lift off with practised, comfortable confidence and a series of commands on the tip of his tongue, and put things into motion.

“Right. We’re doing this,” he decides. “Are you good to go? Could you run tests on Felucia tomorrow?”

“We’ve been planning to,” Rose says.

“Finn told us we could.” Jannah catches Poe’s eyes and waits until he gives her a confirmative nod. Seamlessly, she goes on, “We need a trial run for the code to know if we’ve dealt with all of the security and how we can broadcast messages to the right people. Jayelle says she can only do the fine-tuning on site.”

“Perfect.” Poe turns to his fellow pilots, who have been listening to the explanations intently. “You’ve heard it; we’re taking the Falcon to Felucia. We’ll talk details at the wrap meeting.”

The response is immediate and unequivocally thrilled. “Are we catching TIEs?” Jessika asks and bumps Karé’s shoulder, who laughs at the prospect.

“I’d go for ground facilities, unless you and Zorii want to almost crash into three different things again.”

“But it’s not as fun,” Suralinda insists.

“Take that to the strategy table,” Poe tells them. He wouldn’t be too opposed to catching TIEs, just to see if the code can make its way up the communication chain from that level, and also because the brief, pain- and panic-riddled chance he’d had to fly a TIE fighter hadn’t answered half the questions he has about those things.

“Wrap meeting,” he repeats. “It’s late, so we’re starting early. You think you can find the rest of the squadron and tell them?”

Jessika does a half-salute. “On it.”

Suralinda and Karé are already brainstorming strategies as they wander off. Jessika shoves Zorii’s shoulder before she turns to join them.

“You coming?”

“One moment,” Zorii says. She catches Jannah’s arm and smiles, in that sweet way she’s always had for her friends but that looks a lot more mature now. “Are you up for another flying lesson after the meeting?”

Jannah looks impossibly even more enthusiastic than before. “Always. Rose and I just need to go over some things with Jayelle.”

“I’ll be at my ship,” Zorii says. Her hand lingers on Jannah’s elbow, too briefly to go beyond the casual but too long not to be affectionate. “Just get there when you’re ready.”

“Looking forward to it.”

They smile at each other with an open, relaxed comfort that Poe isn’t used to from anyone in the Resistance at all. Jessika, who is still hovering by Zorii’s shoulder, catches Poe’s gaze and raises her eyebrows at him. He wishes he had the information to warrant a suggestive side glance or a smirk, or even a headshake, but he doesn’t, so he shrugs.

Jannah’s smile widens. “Any chance I can get you on an orbak?”

“You’re welcome to try,” Zorii retorts and laughs.

It’s neither the sarcastic jeer Poe remembers from when their bickering got too biting for comfort, nor the empty attempts at joy he’s seen from her in the past days, nor her loud laughter of triumph and blowing up TIE fighters. This laugh is a quiet one, and thoroughly genuine. It makes her eyes crinkle and puts wrinkles on her face that weren’t even distant thoughts a decade ago.

It’s difficult to see in the red evening light, but there’s a bit of colour in her cheeks that had been missing since Kijimi, or maybe even earlier. Her eyes are still red, but they’re less so now that she’s spent hours laughing and chatting.

Jannah smiles back with the same honesty she has for everything, her grin wide and toothy, and goes on to try and convince her. Jessika chimes in after a moment, expressing her own interest in learning to handle orbaks, and Poe decides to leave them to it.

Even if his wingmanning hasn’t reached its intended purpose of getting Zorii laid – and he doubts he’ll find out anytime soon – it looks like something came out of it either way.

He turns to Rose, who is watching the exchange as well. She’s probably waiting for Jannah. Poe taps her shoulder and she looks up at him with a smile so full of pride that Poe automatically grins back.

“Hey, good job.”

“Thanks.” Rose turns the plug in her hands. “We talked about some action plans, too. Finn had a few great ideas for how we can go about picking up rebelling stormtroopers. I’ll fill you in at the wrap meeting.”

Poe lowers his voice. “Where is Finn, anyways?”

He feels like Finn should be here, introducing the first tentative success of this operation with the same pride Rose has for it and one of his sunlit smiles. But of course, Rey had made a promise. And so, Rose’s response is less of an answer and more of a confirmation.

“He’s still with Rey, I think. I didn’t want to pull them apart again, so I didn’t ask him to come.”

Her smile softens. Poe doesn’t smile back, although he maybe should. He doesn’t examine it further. If he focuses on how relieved he is, he doesn’t have to think about the tightness in his chest, or something like that. It’s probably flawed logic.

“I heard you talked to her,” Rose says.

Poe shrugs and cocks his head. “Yeah. She came up to me though, so I didn’t really do what you asked.”

Rose laughs quietly. “I don’t think that matters. Thanks. We had a talk about it and Rey said you helped a lot.”

That does make him smile, and it makes his heart a lot lighter too. “Yeah? I’ll hold her hand and listen to her weird secrets every day, then.”

Rose raises her eyebrows and gives him a meaningful look. Poe can’t really make out if she’s hinting at the same thing he’s hinting at, but if she is, he fully understands why she hadn’t felt equipped to handle that on her own.

He ends up giving her a vague gesture of agreement, though he really doesn’t know what he’d do if Rey had more than one weird secret that warranted such a look. He wonders how Finn is dealing with this, and what else they might be talking about, and then firmly stops himself from doing so.

“I think we can take turns,” Rose suggests. “Each of us takes care of one weird secret at a time.”

“Good thinking,” Poe agrees and pats her shoulder. “That’s why Leia promoted you.”

Rose giggles, which makes Jannah look up from her conversation that has moved on from orbaks to the difference between First Order and Resistance speeders. It’s a topic Poe feels inclined to add his thoughts to, but Jannah joins Rose’s side before he can get a word in and the two of them walk off together, already back to proudly holding the plug between them and talking action plans.

Poe follows Jessika and Zorii back to the cave and does gain some new insight on First Order speeders, most of it second-hand information passed on from Jannah. He’ll have to take her aside and interrogate her about this eventually.

He heads back to the Tantive IV first, gets out of his pilot suit in his Finn-less quarters and takes a scorching shower that probably takes far too long. When he arrives at the command centre, hair still damp, most of the squadron is already waiting for him.

It doesn’t take them very long to cover Kashyyyk, but sharing all the intel on White Flag with the squadron and editing their plans for Felucia accordingly more than makes up for that. They’re at the centre for almost two hours, and by the time Poe is satisfied enough with their plans for tomorrow, the cave is humming with the sound of cheap electric lights and the sky outside has gone pitch dark.

It’s very convenient.

Poe dissolves the meeting with a clap. “Well done, everyone. See you tomorrow at seven sharp to go over the rest of it.” Some of the squadron members groan at the time he names, and Poe sympathises more than he should, seeing that it would be in his power to make all proceedings at the base start at noon. But it’s not like he sleeps a lot, or very well, anyways.

He raises his hand before the party can break up for good and makes eye contact first with Karé, then with Jessika and then with Suralinda. Once he’s sure he has all of their attention, he beckons them over with a wave of his hand and calls, “Black Squadron, you come with me!”

He doesn’t need to check to know that they’re on his heels when he makes his way out of the command centre and starts crossing the cave with quick steps. BB-8 rolls next to him, obviously delighted to be involved in more droid-friendly activities than strategy meetings.

Jessika catches up with them when they’re halfway to the exit.

“Why are we following you?”

“Yeah, I was planning to catch some shuteye,” Suralinda complains from somewhere behind Poe’s right shoulder.

“Because I’m Black Leader, that’s why,” he throws back. “Trust me and see for yourselves.”

That doesn’t spare him Suralinda’s dissatisfied commentary, or Jessika’s suspicious frown, but it’s all half-hearted. After all, he’s right. He’s Black Leader, and they had followed him to Exegol without asking a single question.

He leads them out of the cave, away from the base and onto a path through the woods, where the stars disappear behind the treetops and there isn’t a speck of light except for the torches Poe and Karé pull out of their pockets, and the little lamp BB-8 lights right next to his lens. As the only one who knows precisely where Poe is taking them, the droid has a distinctly smug air around him.

There is a shortcut to their destination that would take them off the beaten tracks, but Poe grew up in a place like this and knows, as intimately as he knows his own name, that you should never walk deep into the jungle at night. The path curves and splits. They take the right branch, which is too narrow for two people to walk next to each other. Karé raises her torch, illuminating how the path curls ahead through the woods, looming trees covered in moss and liana flanking each side.

“Where the hell are we going?” she asks. She’s tired and not at all amused. Poe winces a little.

“Just a bit further. I’ll tell you there.”

At least he hopes he correctly remembers the way Rey showed him and isn’t stranding them in the middle of the jungle. Getting lost in places like this is irritatingly easy, because everything kind of looks the same, even to someone who went through Kes Dameron’s homebrew jungle safety lessons. Well, if everything else fails, he has his comm, and they’ve been through worse. He wonders what Finn would say if Poe called to tell him he’d have to come rescue them from the jungle.

Suralinda groans. “I knew it. Dameron has finally snapped and is going to murder us in the woods.”

“Clam it, Sura,” Poe mutters. He recognises one of the fallen trees. It is covered in fungi that emit an eerie blue glow. They had only been vaguely turquoise by daylight, but the shape of the tree is undeniably the same he had walked past on Rey’s heels this afternoon.

BB-8 seems to see it too because he speeds up and disappears between trees and lianas. Poe follows, brushing branches and leaves aside. The first stars peek through the leaves and one of Ajan Kloss’s moons shines brightly through the thinning treetops. He can see BB-8 roll slowly onto the clearing up ahead and twist around to make sure everyone is following.

Poe keeps walking until he steps out of the cover of the trees and can see stars when he looks straight up at the sky.

It’s a small clearing, but Rey had been right – it’s an excellent quiet place. It’s too far from the base to see or hear any of the ruckus there, and the only noises surrounding them are those of the jungle. There’s the rustling of leaves, the call of an animal Poe hopes is a bird from deep in the woods, the soft sound the soil makes when it gives under heavy footwear.

Towards the centre of the clearing, there is one lonely old tree. It’s smaller and stouter than its cousins in the woods, who had to fight to outgrow each other to get as much sunlight as possible. Poe is almost disappointed it isn’t Force sensitive.

Jessika appears at his shoulder. “Are you planning to propose to us?”

“If I’m not married when I’m forty, I might,” Poe warns her. She snorts, and they grin at each other. “It’s pretty, right?”

Jessika nods. “I still don’t know what we’re doing here.”

Karé comes up behind her, Suralinda in tow. She’s walking slowly, hugging her own waist with one arm and holding the torch with the other. Poe crosses the distance between them and puts an arm around her, taking her hand where it rests on her waist.

“Come along. Under that tree, and sit down there. General’s orders.”

The tree is perched on top of a small hill that BB-8 rolls up effortlessly. Suralinda flops down next to him and gives Poe an expectant look.

“And now?”

Jessika bumps her shoulder when she sits down next to her. “Don’t ruin the moment.” But she looks up at Poe as well, curious and obviously waiting for an announcement.

He answers her with a frown for now. He has to let go of Karé when they sit down, the five of them forming a wonky circle, but he slides closer to her as soon as he can.

“I wanted to get you out here to take the evening off,” he begins. “None of us are getting any breathers at the base, so we’ll damn well have to create some free time for ourselves. I thought this was a nice place. I want us to take a moment to say goodbye to Snap.”

Karé’s breath hitches. For one terrible moment, Poe fears that he overstepped a line. He might have been Snap’s friend, but Karé was his wife, and everyone with common sense would say that she should take the lead in a situation like this.

But all she does is lean more heavily into Poe’s side. He is watching her carefully, so he immediately catches her gaze when she looks up. Her brown eyes are wide and sad, but she says, “Thank you.”

“That’s a good idea,” Jessika says softly.

Suralinda nods in agreement. BB-8 lets out a low, melancholic whistle.

Poe looks up at the night sky, where the stars form by now familiar constellations. The giant half-shape of the planet Ajara is hanging there, framed by two moons, and behind all of that, the galaxy stretches out like colourful mist dotted with billions of lights.

“I don’t actually know what to do,” he says. “I don’t have a speech or anything. It’s just us, so I thought we’d come up with something together.”

He looks at Karé again, whose head is almost on his shoulder, but she stays quiet. They all do for a while and just sit and watch the stars.

Eventually, Suralinda clears her throat. She has her legs drawn up and both arms wrapped around them, with her chin on her knees. “Not to sound like a journalist,” she begins with an uncharacteristic amount of care, “but we could tell stories. About our favourite memories with Snap.”

Jessika smiles at the ground. “He’d like that.”

Karé nods. Poe feels it against his shoulder. “He would.”

BB-8 beeps gently in Suralinda’s direction, and Poe gives her a smile. “Great idea, Sura.” He glances down at Karé and adds, very quietly, “Do you want to start?”

But she shakes her head with almost no hesitation. “Not yet.”

“Okay.” He glances around and points at Suralinda. “Sura had the idea, so she should start.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but it’s brief and playful. “Alright. I have a good one.”

She starts to talk, with the practised ease of someone who used to tell good stories for a living, and Poe settles into the atmosphere and listens.

-

When Poe returns to the Tantive IV, he’s feeling lighter than he has in days. It’s a dizzy kind of weightlessness, like soaring in zero gravity with nothing to hold onto, but there’s a bone-deep peacefulness that comes with it, like the undisturbed quiet of space, if hovering in that vacuum wasn’t a good recipe for suffocation.

He consciously feels every breath in his throat and his chest, in tune with the steady, slow beating of his heart. His eyes are still a little sore, because they’d all wept at some point during their private little memorial, even BB-8, whose equivalent to weeping is a quiet, shaky hoot. For the first time in months, Poe doesn’t feel like he’s in a rush.

His quarters are empty when he gets there. He stands by the door for a while after it closes, looking around and finding his place in things. Finally, he pulls his jacket off and settles on his bed with a datapad to review some supply lists. It’s technically Finn’s job – they’ve split most of the work, with Poe handling the squadron and Finn covering most of what happens on the ground of Ajan Kloss – but Poe figures that Finn might want to have the rest of the night off.

It’s slow work, and his mind drifts all over the place, but it’s nothing he really has to concentrate on, and as he knows Connix, she already went over this thrice anyways. He gets it mostly done before long. It’s around that time the door opens and Finn steps inside.

Poe sits up on his bed and turns off the datapad. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Finn says back. His face is oddly blank and for a moment, he isn’t looking at Poe at all. Then he does, and instantly frowns. “What happened to you?”

It takes a moment for Poe to put two and two together and realise that all the weeping must show on his face.

“Cried,” he answers. “Held a little memorial for Snap with the Squadron. Got pretty emotional.”

“Shit,” Finn breathes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Really okay, actually.” Poe grins to make his point, which seems to work well enough to take some of the tension out of Finn’s shoulders. If he can share a bit of his weightlessness with Finn, then he’ll readily do that.

He eyes him curiously and voices what he had been vaguely considering since he had gotten back from the jungle. “Do you think we can do something like that for Leia? Take an evening off, and everyone tells their favourite stories about her. Something for the whole base.”

Finn nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Tomorrow, maybe? Day after?”

“Day after,” Poe decides. “No idea how long Felucia is gonna take. I heard we’re ready to bring White Flag along.”

That makes Finn smile, however tightly. “Yeah. Sorry I wasn’t at the meeting. I had a day,” he says pointedly.

That much is obvious, from how weary he looks and from the nervous way his fingers twitch. Poe tries to pretend he doesn’t pick up on it and stays casual.

“We’re going over it again tomorrow at seven, so you’re welcome to show up to that.”

“Seven?” Finn grimaces. “I hate you.”

Poe grins back, unflinching. “I also went over the supply lists for you, by the way.”

“Right, I take that back. You’re great.”

“I know,” Poe says and delights in watching Finn’s genuine and deep gratefulness turn into an affectionate eyeroll. He’s head over heels for this man.

Finn is also still awkwardly standing there, right in front of the door, like he has no idea if walking into his own room would be an acceptable thing to do.

Poe tilts his head in the direction of Finn’s bed, as a quiet hint, but it elicits no reaction.

Alright then. Time to address the falumpaset in the room. “How did it go with Rey?” he asks.

Instead of going anywhere that makes sense, Finn takes a step back and leans against the door. “Yeah, she told me you two talked.”

“Sorry,” Poe offers, but Finn dismisses that with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t, I’m not mad at you. Why would I be mad at you?”

There’s a bit too much emphasis on the “you”. It fills the room with tension that is almost tangible.

“I’m covering all my bases. You’re mad at Rey?” Poe guesses.

“No,” Finn says, then reconsiders and lets his head fall back against the door. “Yes? I don’t know.”

He sounds desperately confused. Poe would like to reach out and offer him comfort, the physical kind that always works pretty well for them, but he’d have to stand up for that and that amount of effort would just make it weird. So he moves over to sit on the edge of the bed and folds his hands in his lap.

“Alright. We can figure this out. What did you talk about?”

Finn gives him a wryly amused look through half-lidded eyes. “Why she didn’t talk to us for days. Why she thought Force-throwing me across the Death Star was a good idea. The whole Kef Bir mess, just in general. Why she kept the hallucination thing from us for months. She apologised for all of that, by the way.”

Poe nods. Good girl.

“So I’m not mad at her for any of that,” Finn continues. “Not that I ever really was.”

He seems to pick up on that not being the healthiest thing to say, especially after everything he just listed, because he meets Poe’s half-controlled glare with kind eyes and shrugs.

“I think it’s the Force,” he explains. “I know what she’s feeling without really having to think about it. So all of these things – I understand why she did that. I can feel what she feels when she makes those decisions. I don’t think I’d be this okay with it if I couldn’t.”

That takes more of a weight off Poe’s shoulders than he’d be willing to admit. It’s nice to be rid of the nagging thought that, maybe, he’s just a terrible person, which had been haunting the far back of his mind since Kef Bir. Paradoxically, it also makes him less angry at Rey.

“So, you talked about all that,” he says. “And? Anything else?”

He knows he’s prodding a bit, and Finn does too, by the way his eyebrows go up.

“Oh, I don’t know. I gave her all the updates on White Flag and we talked about this and that.”

He’s teasing, probably. He sounds like he’s teasing, because there’s a mocking tinge in his voice and he’s talking a bit too fast. But with how tense he still is, it’s a lot harder to make out than usual. So there’s also the very slight possibility that Rey just hasn’t told him, in which case Poe is going to have the row of a lifetime with her.

They look at each other for a long moment while Poe tries to figure out if he can ask anything more specific.

Then Finn swallows hard, his face twists into utter confusion, and he raises his voice. “So, Rey kissed Kylo Ren?!”

Poe slumps forward, breathing out relief. “I know!”

“Please tell me this is as weird as I think it is,” Finn pleads, head still leaning against the door.

“Yeah, no, I’m with you,” Poe says immediately. “I’ve had the image stuck in my head for hours.”

“Thanks! I’m not getting rid of it either. The worst part is that Rey might accidentally be broadcasting this and I’m seeing the actual thing.”

“Ouch.” Poe sucks in a breath through his teeth and lets it out as a breathy laugh. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

Finn laughs too, but it’s joyless. He stares up at the ceiling, his jaw clenched. His hands are fists on both sides of his body. He blinks twice and then keeps his eyes closed. His whole expression shifts and loses all its lightness, and what remains is a heavy, agonised scowl.

Poe almost jumps to his feet and pulls him in, but that might just make things worse, so he grips the bedding to keep himself anchored.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?” he asks gently.

“Yeah. I just need a moment.” Finn takes a few deep but steady breaths. Finally, he detaches himself from the door and looks around the room like everything he sees is foreign to him. “I don’t know what’s going on, that’s the thing.”

He takes a step forward, and another, and then he’s pacing back and forth in the narrow, short corridor between their beds. “I’m not mad at Rey. I’ve got nothing to be mad about, anyways,” he huffs, like every word hurts him. He swallows, and his pacing slows. “It’s the Force thing. I can sense how confused she is about all this, and I get it. I don’t really agree with it, but I get her and I’m not gonna blame her.”

Poe settles on watching him pace, his head turning every time Finn walks past him. He has no idea what to say about all this, other than that he knows, he understands, it’s alright to be hurt.

“I don’t even know who I’m angry at,” Finn says, desperately, to the wall. “I’m just angry in general.”

He’s within arm’s reach, so Poe stretches and touches his side. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Finn turns to face him, finds his eyes, and stops looking so damn lost. Instead, his face drops, dragged down like there are weights on his facial muscles, leaving him to just look sad. With the same lead weight, he drops down next to Poe on the bed.

Poe’s arm is around him a split second later. “Did you tell Rey any of that?” he asks.

Finn glances at him like he’s lost his mind. “No. Of course not. Rey’s got nothing to do with this. I’m glad she told me.”

“Sounds to me like you’re handling this alright,” Poe says, trying to sound encouraging. It doesn’t have any of the desired effects, because Finn just shoots him a doubtful look. Poe tries boxing his arm instead. If there’s a slight chance it’ll make him look less miserable, it’s worth a shot.

He pairs it with a tight smile. “Hey. The woman you love kissed Kylo fucking Ren. I’d be pissed about that, too.”

Finn doesn’t relax, but he pauses, narrowing his eyes at the opposite wall. Then he straightens up a bit and props his left arm up on his leg so his upper body is turned towards Poe. For a moment, he just looks at him, which still feels electric. Poe tries to raise his brows in a question, but he doesn’t get to it, because Finn’s whole face twists up in pain, heavier even than before, and it just gets worse when Poe instinctively pulls him closer.

“Fuck,” Finn says. “I’m really messing this up, right?”

It throws Poe off course completely. He pats Finn’s shoulder because that’s all the comfort he can give while he racks his brain, trying to put two and two together and make sense of this whole conversation, and comes up with nothing. He doesn’t even know if this is still about Rey. He thought he had just expressed his opinion on that, and that Finn is very much not messing anything up with her.

He shakes off the confusion. Honesty, he’s found, works best in situations like these. He leans closer to Finn. “Can’t tell you if you are if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about.”

Finn makes an aborted gesture that doesn’t end up meaning anything. “This whole thing. You and Rey.”

Poe sits up straight, understanding dawning that makes him slightly frantic. “Hey, no, no, no. We talked about that. It’s alright.”

Finn gives him a look that conveys that he knows exactly what Poe is doing here. Poe tips his head to the side and shrugs. He’s not going to pretend it isn’t messy and hurts, but that’s not Finn’s fault. He decides to make that abundantly clear by voicing it.

“Not on you, buddy.”

Finn holds his gaze. “Kind of is.”

Poe shakes his head. “Nope. Not on anyone of us. Just kind of weird.”

Finn scans him briefly, probably to check if he means it. Whatever he comes up with seems to be good, because he softens and a little warmth returns to his eyes.

“You’re something,” he states, like that makes sense.

Luckily, they have a hive mind, so Poe gets what he means. He gives Finn’s shoulder another strong pat. “Not really. I’ve just been through this being in love thing once or twice.”

“Lucky you,” Finn mumbles and lets his forehead drop against Poe’s shoulder.

Poe leans into him. He can’t not – it’s like magnetism. They’ve always been that way, seeking each other out and pulling each other in, and they’ve grown so accustomed to how they work together that it would be silly not to give in to it. So Poe’s body works on autopilot to slot them together until Finn’s nose ends up pressed into the curve of Poe’s neck.

He doesn't kiss the top of Finn’s head. Just kind of presses the lower half of his face into his hair. It smells of Resistance-issued shampoo.

Finn’s hand travels up Poe’s back until it comes to rest between his shoulder and his neck, fingertips brushing his collarbone. They stay like that for a moment, which Poe spends staring at the bare metal wall. It’s not the most interesting thing in the world.

The most interesting thing in the world, according to Poe’s subjective and, due to current events, very biased opinion, lets out a deep, weary sigh eventually and pushes himself off Poe’s shoulder. He stays close enough that Poe can feel his breath against his jawline. His eyes are wide and very dark under the irritated curl of his brows and his jaw is set very tightly.

“Fuck this,” he mutters.

Poe’s eyes wander downwards, to where Finn’s lips are pressed together. It’s only halfway deliberate. He looks up again and makes very deliberate eye contact. He tilts his head a little, so he can ask, unmistakably, if they’re on the same page here.

“Fuck this?”

Finn hesitates. Then, he gives Poe a tense nod and emphatically states, “Fuck this.”

It's kind of embarrassing how quickly Poe is all over him. He doesn't have the time or the brain functions to be embarrassed though, because his tongue is in Finn's mouth.

They’re back to being frantic and uncoordinated. Poe’s hands are roaming, pressing against Finn’s back and his chest and his shoulders. He’s not wearing a jacket, just one of Poe’s off-white shirts, so Poe can feel his body heat through the fabric. He’s warm all over.

They part with a low gasp, and Poe moves forward again, only to notice that Finn’s hands are firm on his shoulders, holding him in place, and Finn has drawn back, just out of reach. Poe immediately leans back himself and searches for his eyes.

Finn doesn’t look distressed, just uneasy, almost nervous. He’s so close that Poe can easily make out his pupils even in the dim light of only one old ceiling lamp, and they’re blown wide.

“Fuck. Sorry,” Finn says, still out of breath. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m probably terrible at this.”

Poe stares at him, because yes, it’s not exactly great kissing, but he’s having the time of his life. Then, his brain catches up with the rest of the world, which probably doesn’t include stormtroopers having any awkward first teen crushes, or first dates, or first anythings.

“Shit,” he swears under his breath. “Was that your first kiss the other day?”

Finn tilts his head in what is neither a yes nor a no. “Technically, Rose was my first kiss.”

Right. That would explain the messiness, but Poe won’t go pointing fingers when he himself hadn’t managed to set any kind of coherent rhythm, and he’s had almost twenty years of kissing practice. He’s been crashing into this like the love-blind idiot he is, and now Finn has no idea what kissing feels like when it’s actually good.

“Wait.” He grins because he can’t help it. “Let me—”

He slides one hand to the curve of Finn’s neck and cups his cheek with the other. Finn leans in to meet the touch, and Poe smiles against his lips before he kisses him again.

He takes his time with it, keeps it shallow first to give Finn time to adjust and deepens the kiss gradually, almost strategically. Poe is absolutely determined to make this the best kiss he can give, one he wishes could have been his own first instead of the fumbling mess he had managed to fabricate with fourteen.

Nipping on Finn’s lips earns him a low hum and coaxing them open is very easy. He intertwines his hands behind Finn’s neck and slowly leans back further, gently pulling Finn down and on top of him, and Finn lets himself be pulled without complaints. They break apart once or twice, as the movement requires, but Poe isn’t done yet; he still has some tricks up his sleeve, so he finds Finn’s lips again and keeps kissing him just as thoroughly as before.

It’s nice. It gives him the chance to concentrate on this, learn how Finn reacts to different things and try out if he can repeat previous successes if he does the same thing ten seconds later.

When he finally pulls back for good, Finn swallows hard before he opens his eyes and gapes at him. “Wow,” he breathes. “Can you do that again?”

Poe laughs, a little dizzy himself. Force forbid, this is doing things for his ego.

“Anytime you like,” he promises, which is a statement of astounding accuracy, and pulls Finn back in.

It kind of goes from there. Their legs are tangled, Poe’s hands are on Finn’s back and Finn’s are in Poe’s hair, and they take their time kissing the living daylights out of each other. Apparently, Finn takes to kissing like he takes to wielding lightsabers and shooting one-handed blasters and running a Resistance, because he’s getting pretty good at this really quickly. Poe tells him so between kisses, and Finn just grins smugly, which makes both of them laugh.

The downside to Finn being a ridiculously fast learner is that Poe is gradually losing control of this make-out session. That would be an upside in any other situation, but technically, despite their mutual enthusiasm, they’re still treading on thin ice, with a big question mark hanging behind the issue of where exactly they’re at with all this, or whether this is a good idea.

But it’s really hard to keep all that in mind when Finn picks up on one of the things Poe does with his tongue, tries it for himself, and attains a resounding success that gets top marks from Poe and shuts his brain off for five whole seconds. On autopilot, he firmly cups the back of Finn’s head and pushes up into him, which takes Finn by surprise enough that his fingers tug on Poe’s hair, and yeah, Poe has always kinda been into that.

He tries his best to keep his thoughts above the waistline. It works fairly well when he concentrates – he’s very glad he isn’t twenty anymore – but he has to periodically take a few seconds off and focus on anything other than Finn’s hot mouth on his and the fact that he’s doing this at all, really doing this, and he’s still stupidly in love.

He finds that the image of Rey kissing Kylo Ren works brilliantly to turn him off. The issue with that is that it sends him down another train of thought altogether, which he can’t quite understand the full scope of due to his brain not being in commission, but that makes his chest constrict.

He breaks the kiss for a brief moment and opens his eyes. It’s really difficult, and it takes him three tries to say anything instead of letting Finn’s general existence tempt him into more kisses.

“Are you—” fuck it, kiss him again “—are you making out with me because Rey kissed Kylo Ren?”

He tries to lean up into another kiss, but Finn draws back completely and stares down at him in shock.

Helplessly, he says, “Maybe? Fuck, what if I am?”

His voice is pitched too high and his eyes are frantically searching Poe’s face for an answer. His fingers leave Poe’s hair and dig into the pillow instead.

Poe grits his teeth and curses his own inability to recognise when he would benefit from shutting the fuck up.

“Hey, no,” he tries and links his hands behind Finn’s neck again, pulling gently. “I didn’t say you should stop.”

It works for two more brief but glorious kisses, then Finn pulls back and firmly puts one hand on Poe’s chest to keep him down on the mattress. He has a perplexed frown on his face.

“You need to get better standards immediately.”

Poe doesn’t have a good answer to this. He could get into standards now, since he would maintain that Finn is the fucking jackpot, no matter what his expectations were when he first started playing this game, and thus worth risking any kind of high stakes. He’d tell him so at length if that would magically eradicate the weirdness that keeps them from making out more. Alas, it most likely wouldn’t, so it’s no use getting worked up over.

He raises his brows, slides one hand down Finn’s chest and pokes him. “Do you want to kiss me?”

Finn blinks. “Yeah,” he says, like it’s a really dumb question to ask. “All the time.”

Poe’s annoyance dissolves and the tingling in his chest makes him smirk. He pokes Finn again. “Then we’re good.”

He takes his hands off Finn to push himself up on the bed, just enough to be able to comfortably sit up. Finn moves with him, mirroring him automatically, until they’re face to face again and Poe curls one hand around the back of Finn’s head.

He leans in and touches their foreheads together, trying to pick up every motion on Finn’s face and smiling at the way his eyelids lower and his shallow breaths touch Poe’s lips. He kisses the corner of Finn’s mouth first, which makes Finn lean closer, and then returns to kissing his lips. Finn sighs into his mouth and kisses him back.

Poe channels the relief that floods his veins and the energy that comes with it into this kiss, and the next, and the next. It gets a bit awkward to do this sitting up eventually, so he slides his hands back and forth over Finn’s shoulders to give him a warning and pushes gently, shuffling them into position. He has to stop focusing on kissing to work out the logistics, earning both a raised eyebrow and a slightly dazed smile from Finn, which he answers with a grin of his own before he guides Finn down onto the mattress and goes back to kissing him.

He’s at the point where his lips feel kind of numb and his tongue refuses to really work with him, so he lets himself go sloppy. The new position gives him the chance to prop himself up on one arm next to Finn’s head and use his other hand to trace the lines of his body – not too much, not anywhere suggestive, but in a curious exploration of the dip of his collarbones, the firm curve of his shoulders, the way his chest rises and falls with his breathing. His heartbeat underneath the shirt Poe let him borrow this morning.

Finn seems to be very into this. His breath hitches when Poe’s fingers gently press against his clavicle and his hand comes up to Poe’s upper arm, where he lets it rest for a moment like he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He moves it up to Poe’s hair eventually and lightly drags his fingers over Poe’s scalp in circling motions.

Poe hums into the kiss a little too loudly and his shoulders drop, limp and tingling with sensation. Finn laughs but keeps doing this thing with his fingers, so Poe kisses him harder, both to shut him up and to tell him that all of this is very much appreciated.

He breaks the kiss with a grin and presses another to Finn’s cheek. His eyelid, which only blinks open after Poe kissed it. His temple, the smooth skin above his cheekbone, his jaw. Poe kisses his way down to Finn’s throat and feels it vibrate under his lips when Finn makes a soft noise. Absentmindedly, he puts his hand on Finn’s waist and keeps it there, holding him close while he nips on the skin where Finn’s neck meets his jawline.

Finn’s fingers freeze in Poe’s hair. His breathing has sped up and instead of continuing the controlled motions that made Poe melt before, he starts fidgeting with individual curls. Poe’s lips are just underneath his earlobe, leaving soft kisses there, when Finn tugs on his hair very, very lightly and says, “Wait.”

Poe full-body freezes. He pushes himself up on his right hand and moves the left from Finn’s waist to his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he hurries to say. “Sorry. Too much?”

Finn shakes his head. He’s breathing hard and frowning but seems genuine when he answers, “No. No, just—” He swallows and holds his hands up in a right angle in front of his chest. “Time out.”

“Alright.” Poe nods and takes two deep breaths while he waits for his blood to stop running cold. He lets his hand drop to Finn’s hair, which seems to be okay, so he starts gently massaging the top of his head.

Finn looks up at him with so much tension it hurts. “Sorry.”

He sounds kind of hoarse. Poe shakes his head. “Nah, I’m sorry. I’ve kinda—” he makes a wide gesture at the ceiling “—got my head in space when it’s about you.”

Despite all the tension, Finn manages to shoot him a drily amused look. “You’ve always got your head in space.”

Poe lets out a startled laugh. “Fair,” he admits and corrects, “Head in space but out of the X-Wing.”

Finn raises his eyebrows very high, but he smiles. “Alright, flyboy.”

They grin at each other, which is still just as easy as it has always been. Poe leans down very slowly to allow Finn to react. When he doesn’t, Poe presses a light kiss to his temple.

Finn watches him when he leans up, every trace of his smile gone. The thin lines on his forehead mean that he’s deep in thought. He opens his mouth, but no words come out, so he closes it again and curtly shakes his head. For a while, they just lie there, holding eye contact, with Poe’s fingers in Finn’s hair.

Eventually, Finn presses his lips together and swallows. “I can’t tell Rey yet. I thought about doing it today, but I know— I can feel she couldn’t deal with that right now.”

Something in Poe’s guts twists sickly. He brings his free hand up to his face and rubs his eyes. He’s suddenly very tired.

“So you’ll tell Rey. And then what?”

He looks at Finn with what feels more like a challenge than he’s strictly comfortable with, though it’s lessened by the fact that he is still caressing Finn’s head. Finn doesn’t call him out on it. His already glum expression just goes even darker.

“I don’t know,” he admits, worked up like he’s confessing something terrible. “But I’ve got to tell her. I can’t not do it.”

Poe wants to kick something around the room. There’s nothing to kick, so he stays still. “What happens if you tell Rey and she says yes?”

“I don’t know,” Finn repeats, more intently and with even more distress. “I’m thinking about it, but I’m not getting anywhere with that.”

Poe scowls at the opposite wall. “I’d just like to know if I’m second choice after Rey.”

Finn freezes. It dawns on Poe that he’s maybe said too much, and too harshly, but his brain is still kind of mushy from all the kissing and his insides feel like someone poured out engine fuel in there and lit it on fire.

He keeps stubbornly staring at the wall, until Finn elbows him and Poe automatically looks down to find that he’s being glared at.

“I’m not gonna pretend that isn’t a nasty way to look at it,” Finn says. “But if there was a second choice, we wouldn’t be having any problems.”

He doesn’t raise his voice, but he sounds genuinely hurt, and that hadn’t been the plan. Poe opts for a tight but apologetic nod and resumes the motion of his fingers in Finn’s hair.

Finn watches him for a long moment but doesn’t seem to find anything comforting, so he leans back into the pillow and sighs loudly. He closes his eyes. Poe kisses his forehead.

Eventually, Finn looks up at him again. His look is clouded with a hazy, dark film. “I can’t stop loving her.”

Poe bites the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, I know.”

Finn’s eyes focus on nothing, not in the glassy way that just means he’s tired but with an eerie clarity, and yup, this is a little scary on him as well. In the same way stars are scary, until you cross the vast distance of space to orbit them and discover yet another sun.

“I felt her die,” he says, very quietly, pronouncing every syllable with care. “On Exegol.” He swallows hard, and his voice breaks. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Like all the stars went out at once.”

“Fuck,” Poe breathes. His lungs don’t fill up with enough air, like someone stabbed through them with a lightsaber. There’s nothing he could say to make this better, so he cups Finn’s face with one hand and presses his lips to his temple and his cheek and the space between his eyes. Finn lets out a shaky breath that takes some of the tension in his muscles with it and his hand comes up to hold the back of Poe’s head, keeping him close and pulling him down a little so that they’re forehead to forehead.

They breathe each other’s breath for a while. Poe still can’t really grasp the concept of Rey having been dead. Dead people stay dead, in his experience. Denying that is futile and down that road lies a lot of senseless agony. Rey, in his mind, is firmly on the living side of things, and her being dead is something he’d only heard of after it had stopped being relevant. He can’t imagine what it’s like to have experienced it first-hand, without the sight of her alive and well cushioning the blow, much like he can’t imagine what it’s like to feel someone die and not just hear it through a comm.

He’d been close enough to death and certain enough of its approach once to have an idea of what dying feels like. He wonders if it’s a similar feeling.

“Are you alright?” he asks Finn, slightly shifting them into a more comfortable position. “You want to talk about that?”

“Yeah, no, I’m good.” Finn shrugs, as far as he can do that lying down and bracketed between Poe’s arms. “She’s fine now. It’s just a weird memory to have.”

Weird indeed. Poe is at a loss for words, so he raises his brows at Finn. “No shit.”

That makes the corners of Finn’s mouth twitch. His hand is still on the back of Poe’s head, and he tightens his grip as he leans up and gives Poe a brief but firm kiss. Poe makes a conscious and tremendous effort not to follow his lips and kiss him more. To make it easier, he gets himself out of kissing distance, lies down on his side next to Finn and props his head up on his hand. His other hand, he rests on Finn’s chest.

Finn glances down at it, then at the ceiling, and then at Poe’s face. “I’m gonna tell you something weird. You have to promise not to laugh.”

“Promise.” Finn doesn’t look entirely convinced, so Poe pokes him and grins. “General’s honour.”

“Okay. I’ll hold you to that.”

Poe shrugs, unperturbed. As long as Finn hasn’t been making out with any Sith, he doubts this will shock him.

Finn covers Poe’s hand on his chest with his own and squeezes. “Back on Jakku,” he begins. “And afterwards. When we met.”

“When you saved my life,” Poe adds and smiles, because it’s still nice to think that he has his very own hero in shining armour. Even if that armour had been First Order-issued.

Finn smiles back tightly, with a hint of bashful pride. “Yeah. That decision to save you – that was intuition. I didn’t decide to rebel and overthrow the First Order or anything. I did that later. Back in that moment, all I knew was that I couldn’t kill for them, and that it would be the right thing to save you.” His gaze leaves Poe’s face and locks on air. “And then later, when I met Rey, she felt right too.”

If Rey talks like she’s speaking for a hundred voices when she’s channelling the Force, Finn sounds like everything he says is certainty, not in a personal but in a cosmic way, like he can clearly see every detail in the structure of the galaxy at once. It’s just as terrifying.

“I think the Force led me here,” he says, almost reverently. “The Resistance is where I’m supposed to be. You and Rey, you’re the people I’m supposed to know.” He blinks and his eyes refocus. “I know it sounds strange, but I believe it.”

Poe flexes the muscles in his shoulders to get rid of the chills running down his spine. His heart feels too large and too heavy for his chest.

“Finn,” he starts. “I’ve seen Rey shoot lightning out of her hands and got my X-Wing grilled by an undead Sith Lord just last week. I’m at the point where I believe anything.”

He turns his hand so his palm faces up, and Finn interlaces their fingers. He looks relieved.

“The point is,” he says, “I’m pretty sure the Force brought me to you. I mean, what are the odds of this? Out of the whole Resistance, and the whole First Order army, it’s us. You,” he stresses and quickly indicates Poe’s general being with his free hand, like that’s all that needs to be said. “This. You know what we’re like.”

Poe does know that. Case in point, he knows exactly what Finn means right now, and it makes heat rise in his chest. It also makes the muscles in his arms twitch because there’s too much tension in his body that he can’t let out. He wants to get into a cockpit and blow things up. He wants something to be easy.

Finn seems to notice Poe’s restlessness, because he holds his hand very tightly. “Things like that make you believe there’s something out there. Not a lot of people fall in love with the first person who calls them by anything but a number.”

There aren’t a lot of people they know who have had that specific experience, but statistically speaking, considering their tiny potential study group, that’s probably right.

Poe lets out a deep breath and shakes his head. He raises Finn’s hand to his lips and presses a lingering kiss against the back of it, and for a moment, he gets to see Finn look up at him like he’s something beautiful, just before his face twists up again and goes stern.

“But the Force brought me to Rey, too,” he says, with an amount of warmth that’s intoxicating. “The moment I met her, I knew she was special, and she’s—"

“I know,” Poe cuts in. He can’t help but smile widely and kiss Finn’s temple again. “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

Finn stays still and studies Poe’s face for a very long time. His eyes are piercing and hyper-focused on Poe. Very firmly, he says, “Yeah, but you don’t see the way I look at you.”

Poe’s thoughts come to a halt, and most of them shut off. It’s not true. He sees that; he does. He’s seeing it right now. It’s a mirror of the way he looks at Finn, with a bit more of Finn’s sunlight and that nervous sense of novelty he still has for some unfamiliar things. It’s a funny little detail, because they’re so deeply familiar with each other in almost every way by now.

It’s also full of love, which Poe has always kind of known but hasn’t really made as much of as he does now that his brain recalibrates and decides that the only actions he should know how to perform are nod and lean down to kiss Finn.

Finn kisses him back with vigour and a hand clenched in the fabric of Poe’s sleeve, and he’s so good at picking up on new things that he’s already a little better at this than Poe is when he’s as lightheaded as he is now.

When he has regained a bit of his overall consciousness and his tongue is out of Finn’s mouth again, Poe gives Finn’s lips three more brief kisses and tries to pull back and order his thoughts, only to find that Finn’s hand is still holding his sleeve and keeping him right where he is. He blinks down into Finn’s eyes.

“I can’t choose Rey over you,” Finn says. It makes Poe feel around a thousand very different things. “Or you over Rey. It doesn’t work.”

That, finally, makes all the disarranged puzzle pieces in Poe’s head slot together and shape a coherent picture. Or, well, most of the pieces do, and the picture is only blurry around the edges. He’s given up on trying to understand everything. But the thing with action plans is that you never know all the details of what you’re getting into before you make them, and he thinks he finally has one for this whole mess.

He eases his arm and sleeve out of Finn’s grip and cocks his head at Finn, who doesn’t seem to share his sudden clarity at all.

“Who said you had to choose?” Poe asks.

Finn switches from looking upset to looking confused. “What?”

Poe leans back again and runs a hand through his hair. He hopes he isn’t getting this all wrong, but he’s pretty confident that he’s back on their shared wavelength. He just has to broadcast clearly enough for Finn to pick up on it. “I mean, I don’t know how Rey feels about this,” he prefaces, because that’s a relevant but as of yet unknown puzzle piece. “But I’d be up for sharing.”

“You’d be—” Finn begins, stops, and gapes. “What?” he repeats.

“You and me,” Poe clarifies and illustrates that by pointing first at Finn and then at himself. He does the same with Finn and a vague location behind the wall. “You and Rey. Both.”

Finn’s eyes go almost comically wide. “So that _is_ a thing people do?”

Somehow, his confusion lifts a ton of weight off Poe’s shoulders. He feels light again, like he’s walking in zero gravity. It also makes him grin very stupidly.

“Yeah. It’s a big galaxy!” He shoves Finn’s shoulder. “If you can imagine something, people are probably doing it.”

Finn seems to consider that for a moment and pulls a face. “Right, that’s a lot of stuff I’m not gonna imagine.” His brows twist together and he limply waves his hand around. “You’re saying that this is a thing? Being in love with more than one person?”

“Yeah. It’s—” Poe lets out a startled laugh. “You honestly thought that didn’t happen?”

Finn swallows heavily, and his expression goes a bit too dark for comfort. “First Order,” he stresses. “They never taught us more than the basics. Everyone I’ve met since had their one person, so I figured that was a two-people thing. It doesn’t make much sense, but there’s a lot that doesn’t, so I’m gonna take some stuff at face value. Relationship constellations weren’t really my first priority when there was a war going on.”

He’s talking too quickly not to be upset, so Poe puts a soothing hand on his chest while he does the math and counts the couples Finn knows. It’s not a lot. Snap and Karé; Han and Leia; Commander D’Acy and Wrobie Tyce. Poe’s parents, from stories. A few on-off things and couples among the Resistance, which he may or may not have picked up on. All in pairs of two, which is natural enough. After all, it’s already difficult to find one person who’s right, unless the Force takes an inexplicable interest in one’s love life.

Poe imagines building up an accurate image of a whole galaxy within less than a year and after over two decades of brainwashing, just through observation, and finds that it’s probably scarily impossible.

“Two’s way more common for humans,” he says, which seems to make Finn relax a bit. “But I know, like—” he counts on his fingers “—four planets where a normal marriage is three people. Three of them have humans on them.”

Finn’s head drops back into the pillows and he stares at the ceiling, swearing under his breath. “Any reason you didn’t tell me that the night before last?”

Poe wants to say that he’d misunderstood the situation, but the words catch in his throat because that, while true, is too simple. He tries to look for a better answer and quickly decides that he doesn’t want to think about that. He waves the thoughts away with his hand.

“Stupid reasons.” His skin is tingling and he stifles a helpless burst of laughter by kissing Finn’s forehead. “Really stupid reasons. It didn’t cross my mind.”

Finn eyes him suspiciously, which clashes with how gently he cups Poe’s cheek in his hand. “Kind of made me think we had a big problem. You know, I reckoned that if that were a thing you’d do, you’d have told me by now.”

“Sorry,” Poe offers and leans into the touch. “Stupid, like I said.”

Really fucking stupid. In a month, he’ll laugh about this – really laugh about it, and not just choke on air a bit like he’s currently doing. Maybe, if he continues getting lucky, he’ll examine what the fuck happened these past days again in a few years, with Finn and maybe with Rey, and laugh about all of that with them.

Finn dismisses his apology with a shrug and a light smile and then, as the ultimate sign that none of this is important and the topic is over and done with, pulls Poe down by the back of his head and kisses the bridge of his nose.

Poe beams down at him and clears his throat. “So, that’s something you’d be interested in?”

Finn barks out a laugh. “Are you kidding me? I feel greedy just thinking about it.”

He’s smiling too, though it’s still tentative. There’s a lot of desperate hope in the slight tremor lacing his voice and the thin line between his brows. Poe runs his thumb over his cheekbone, then his index finger along his jawline, in what he hopes is a soothing motion but has him captivated so much that he doesn’t know if it works.

“Nothing wrong with being a bit greedy.” He himself feels very greedy, and giddier than he ever feels outside of an X-Wing, at the prospect alone that he might get to kiss Finn more, for an indeterminate amount of time. Maybe, if the Force is with him, for decades. That he’ll maybe wake up next to him one day and won’t see that as anything but routine.

He’s fully aware that he’s planning inappropriately far ahead, but he is thirty-three and wears his mother’s wedding ring around his neck. His wildest fantasies have left the realm of the indecent and adventurous a few years ago and are nowadays mostly centred around settling down. He’d help it if he could.

For now, he tries to concentrate only on Finn half next to and half under him. It’s an astounding success, especially when Finn, despite his still thoughtful expression, leaves three careful kisses along Poe’s jawline.

It almost makes Poe forget that they’re still missing a vital puzzle piece. He doesn’t bring it up until Finn is done kissing him, because, yeah, he’s a bit greedy. But he pulls himself together.

“We gotta ask Rey what she thinks about this.”

“I know,” Finn says, a little reluctantly. It sounds like an apology. “But we can’t do that before she has a clear head. I’m not gonna spring this on her now.”

It puts a small damper on Poe’s admittedly hasty optimism, but there’s a line between greedy and selfish, and forcing Rey to make decisions like this in the state Poe last saw her in would cross that line.

“Alright. We’ll wait for her,” he promises, and immediately regrets his choice of wording. Maybe that makes him a bit of a bastard, but with how she’s doing now, it might take Rey months to be alright with thinking about other things, and in that case, Poe would much prefer not to wait. He’d rather have these months with Finn, with the risk of things abruptly ending once Rey is back to normal, than have nothing at all.

His smile goes limp. He hates blind spots on strategy maps; they make him antsy. Experience has shown that those stupidly often hide a whole arsenal of TIEs and weapons and troops ready to topple his entire carefully laid-out action plan.

Finn seems to pick up on that. He presses his lips together when Poe tries to brighten up and forgets to remove the frown from his face, and raises his hand to Poe’s face again. Poe absentmindedly kisses the inside of his wrist. Finn traces Poe’s hairline, frowns, and languidly pushes his fingers into Poe’s hair.

“This isn’t another ‘I take what I get’ thing, right?” he asks. “Because I’m not here for that.”

Poe blinks. A large amount of tension is simply shocked out of his system. Not all of it. But he laughs. “Nope. Not that at all.”

Finn takes his hand out of Poe’s hair and puts it on his shoulder. “Be honest.”

“I’m being honest!” Poe swears, right hand on his chest and all. It just earns him a raised eyebrow, so he sighs, closes his eyes, and tries to put his whole nebula’s worth of messy thoughts and feelings into vaguely coherent sentences.

“Look,” he begins. He finds and holds Finn’s gaze and smiles at him. “I don’t want you to not be with Rey. Never did. Actually, I really want you to be with her,” he adds as soon as he realises that for himself. Now that he has a convenient outlet to get rid of all his envious Rey-related misery, he finds that the idea of Finn never being with Rey is an uncomfortably weird one. Like it’s against the natural order of things, somehow.

Finn squints at him like he’s the strangest person in the galaxy, so Poe grins at him.

“I love you,” he says. There’s no new no-kissing rule in place, not yet, so he underscores that by giving Finn a peck on the lips. “And Rey’s done around a billion things that really piss me off in the past week alone,” he adds, just to make that one clear, “but I love her too. I want you both to be happy.”

Finn swallows. “Okay.” His thumb is rubbing circles where Poe’s collarbone meets his shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. But think about yourself for five seconds.”

“Sure. Let’s see.” Poe’s grin widens and he cocks an eyebrow at Finn. “Pretty dashing guy. Hell of a pilot. Fantastic hair.” He silences whatever doubtlessly exasperated thing Finn starts to say with a kiss. “Great at kissing.”

Finn shoves his shoulder, nowhere hard enough to get Poe off-balance, but Poe picks up on the momentum and lets himself fall over with a throaty laugh. He ends up on his back, next to Finn, and turns his head to beam at him.

“You insolent moron,” Finn groans. He twists around until he’s on his side, facing Poe. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you.”

“You love me,” Poe shoots back without really thinking about it. He’s said this exact thing in this exact cocky tone a million times when they’d been bickering, so it comes to him so naturally that he forgets to consider the shift of implications it has in this new precarious situation.

There’s a beat of silence, then Finn shoves him again and agrees, “Yeah, I do. So tell me what you want out of this, because believe it or not, I kinda care about that.”

“I’ve told you what I want,” Poe promises. He reaches out to pat Finn’s shoulder but ends up leaving his hand there and squeezing. “Got it right here.”

Finn is a lot harder to fluster these days than he used to be, but he sure looks a bit flustered now. “And the whole rest?” he pushes on.

Poe kind of wishes he had gotten more time to sort his thoughts on all this out, so that he could give a more comprehensive answer. He makes do by rolling onto his side again and bringing himself face to face with Finn.

“Buddy, I’m not offering you a compromise here. Me being with you and you being with Rey – that’s the ideal setup in my book.”

He quirks the corner of his mouth up in a smirk, and Finn nods slowly. “Got it.”

They’re very close again and Poe can feel Finn’s breath warm on his lips when he talks. He’s also in a prime spot to watch all the tiny muscles on Finn’s face move when he hesitates and his brow furrows in confusion. “Also, don’t call me ‘buddy’ when we’ve just made out.”

He sounds amused more than anything, and very fond on top of that, and Poe laughs with him.

“Yup, that was weird. Can’t promise it’s not gonna happen again, though.”

“I’ll live,” Finn states and grins like he just won a war. It’s the blue giant smile again, and sometimes, he’s so bright it’s difficult to look at him. At the same time, he’s so captivating it’s impossible to look away. Poe wonders, for the first time, if a bit of that light he has is the Force.

It’s scary, still. But it’s Finn, so it’s alright.

Poe bites the inside of his cheek. “While we wait for Rey,” he begins. “Do you think we could—” he gestures back and forth between Finn and himself “—keep doing this?”

Finn’s smile dims. “Are you alright with that?”

“I’m asking you,” Poe reminds him, which Finn seems to realise is a good point to make.

“Oh, right.” His moment of disorientation passes, and he nods very firmly. “Yes. Please.”

Poe feels like punching the air in celebration, but he doesn’t have enough free range and a bit too much self-respect to go through with that. Instead, he tips his head forward to meet Finn halfway.

It’s exhilarating to kiss him like this, with no thoughts to push aside to make this possible. There’s still a frantic undercurrent to it, like they’re both trying to make the most of this before it ends. Poe certainly is. But that’s easier to ignore when the end doesn’t feel inevitable, and hope has always gone a long way.

Finn lets out a deep breath when they stop kissing for a moment. “It’s really hard not to kiss you once you’ve started doing it,” he informs Poe, who lets out a startled laugh that gets lost in another, deeper kiss.

Finn, he discovers, is just as desperate as he is. Maybe more so. His hands are in Poe’s hair and in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer, and damn, he’s a passionate kisser when he knows what he’s doing. Poe draws back a bit to get himself into a position with more leverage, and pauses when he sees that Finn’s smile has vanished completely. He cocks his head in a question.

“What if,” Finn begins reluctantly and busies himself tugging on Poe’s shirt, “Rey says yes to me but no to this?”

Poe’s heart sinks. He shakes his head. “Your call. Can’t tell you that.”

Finn doesn’t argue, just shifts in discomfort. “I can’t do this if it’s not both of you.”

He sounds like it hurts to say it. Poe nudges his side. “All or nothing?” he suggests, with only a trace of bitterness.

Finn snorts joylessly. “All or nothing.” He buries his head deeper in the pillow and lets out a breath through his teeth. “Fuck. This sucks. This sucks so much.”

“I know it does.”

“Can’t this be easier?”

“Wish it were. You’d think it’d be after winning a war.”

“At least it’s a step up from Exegol,” Finn mutters darkly. He rolls the one eye Poe can see.

“You better mean that, or I’ll have to seriously work on my kissing skills.” Poe feels a surge of pride when Finn laughs at that. He blindly finds Finn’s leg next to his own and lightly kicks his shin. “See it like that – at least we’re handling this together.”

Finn’s other eye emerges from the pillow. He gives Poe a curt nod. “General.”

Poe nods back. “General.”

He traces the lines of Finn’s face with his fingers. Finn wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him closer. They both start grinning in unison and are still laughing when they kiss again.

Poe wants to stay in this moment forever, where they’re locked in a full-body embrace and Finn’s warm body is pressed against his own and Finn loves him so unabashedly that it shows in the tiniest things, like the soft pressure of his fingers on Poe’s back and the shallow breaths he lets out between kisses. Poe is going to keep doing this until he has to roll out of bed at seven in the morning and head off to the strategy meeting. Or until he falls asleep. His bones do feel heavy as lead, and dozing off with his face tucked under Finn’s chin sounds heavenly.

Eventually, Finn moves one hand to Poe’s shoulder and the other to his cheek and pushes him back a bit. He looks a bit dishevelled from all the kissing and he has that lopsided smile on his lips that always makes him look a bit roguish and Poe keeps staring at him, because he’s astonishingly handsome.

“I think this might work,” he says, like he’s talking about mission planning. He lightly shoves Poe’s shoulder too, the way he does when he has a good idea at a meeting. It takes Poe a few seconds to realise he’s not talking strategy.

He laughs softly. “Yeah?”

Finn smiles with all the confidence of someone who knows how the galaxy works at its core. “Just a feeling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then they live happily ever after. Eventually. After they all go to therapy for a bit, start a stormtrooper mutiny, and kill some fascists.
> 
> If you got this far - thank you for letting me trick you into reading a story about adjusting to change and starting to overcome a fundamental sense of inadequacy by making you believe it's a polyamorous love story. (Which it also is. It can be both. Why should it have to choose?) May the Force be with you.
> 
> As a final note:  
> "In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously determined position, or fix, by using estimations of speed and course over elapsed time. [...] While dead reckoning can give the best available information on the present position with little math or analysis, it is subject to significant errors of approximation. [...] These errors tend to compound themselves over greater distances, making dead reckoning a difficult method of navigation for longer journeys." - Dead reckoning, in: Wikipedia.  
> I thought this was fitting.

**Author's Note:**

> Holler at me on [Tumblr](https://veilchenjaeger.tumblr.com/)


End file.
